A not-so-quiet week in Lake Wobegon

January 16, 2008 Off By Jason


I’ll bet this has got people at the Chatterbox Cafe talking.

A Prairie Home Companion” host Garrison Keillor is suing his next-door neighbors to block their construction of a three-car garage, reports the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in St. Paul, Minn., says completion of the addition to the neighbor’s house would obstruct Keillor’s property and harm the value of his house.

The city of St. Paul is also named as a defendant; Keillor claims neither he nor his wife were informed about the date or time of the zoning hearing meeting where the addition was approved.

The neighbors, Lori Anderson and Paul Olson, say they’re “heartsick” over the lawsuit, and that Keillor and his wife have otherwise been good neighbors. “We wrote them a very conciliatory e-mail to say we’ll do anything we can to work it out,” Anderson told the newspaper. “They refused to talk to us.”

One of the nation’s longest-running public radio shows, “PHC” is heard on more than 500 radio stations, including Pittsburgh’s WQED-FM (89.3), Youngstown’s WYSU-FM (88.5), Erie’s WQLN-FM (91.3), and State College’s WPSU-FM (91.5), as well as the West Virginia Public Radio Network.