My friend Victoria sent this to me:
I get emails from “Prairie Home Companion” regularly and it’s some of my favorite reading and listening. This is an email response to a reader’s question about the closing of the Lake Woebegon story each week. I thought his response was so insightful.
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Post to the Host Two Weeks In A Row!
Your Lake Wobegon ending is “where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” Do you think it is more important for a woman to be strong or good-looking?
Lena H.
Anniston, AL
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Response:
Women are not decorative objects, my sweet, they are living, talking, thinking action figures who are on missions, some of them secret, driven by powerful inner forces, just as we men are. Because they are so crucial to the human endeavor, it’s more important for them to be strong. The breakdown of a woman is a terrible thing. Families may be broken, lives skid into the ditch, when the mother falls apart. Men are not so crucial and that is why they earn more and are more prominent and successful and gaudy and write songs and novels and travel around giving speeches
