Cooler but still well above normal this week

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an hour-and-fifteen minute encore at Tanglewood on Saturday night

, an extraordinary performance in one of his final shows before retiring from A Prairie Home Companion. It was his final 

"Every year they strive to prolong the encore beyond the all-time record, which I believe is 75 minutes," 

Keillor told the Berkshire Eagle's Clarence Fanto

, the person to whom Keillor announced last year that he's retiring. "We stand out on stage and sing and they sing with us and the cows come home and nobody leaves. This happens nowhere else in America."

Whatever affinity the East Coast has for Minnesota has come largely because of the image of the place created by Keillor.

Has that made it easier or harder to be a Minnesotan in the outside world?

It's unusual for Minnesotans to speak ill of the retiring. That didn't stop 

Jerry Anderson, of Eagan, in the Star Tribune yesterday. 

"Prairie Home Companion has succeeded well in at least one way; it has kept us pure and shielded us from those Californians and Coloradans to which you refer," a defender countered.

Let's consider this. Once A Prairie Home Companion -- or at least its Minnesotaness -- disappears, what is our image to the bubs in Colorado and elsewhere?

NewsCut

Bob Collins

Author

Once A Prairie Home Companion -- or at least its Minnesotaness --  disappears, what is our image to the bubs in Colorado and elsewhere?

Our identity after Prairie Home considered

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