No Gunplay, Just Wordplay, With a Cowboy Named 'Palindrome'

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: palindromes aplenty!

RS: A palindrome is something that reads the same backwards or forwards. Palindromes make us think of Janus, the Roman god with one face looking forward, another looking backward.

AA: And from Janus we get January. And from that we get the idea to rerun "The Ballad of Palindrome" each New Year.

RS: It features a skit that spoofs a cowboy show on television in the 1950s called "Paladin." Here now is the group Riders in the Sky joined by singer and songwriter Johnny Western.

AUDIO: "The Ballad of Palindrome/Palindrome: The Scene with Johnny Western"

RS: That's Riders in the Sky, from their 1998 album "A Great Big Western HOWDY!" on the Rounder Records label.

AA: And that's Wordmaster for this week. Our e-mail address is word@voanews.com. And our segments are all online at voanews.com/wordmaster. Wishing you a great big happy 2006, with Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.