Orion, the constellation (as opposed to O’Ryan, the mythical Irish warrior), has been poking its nose and its belt and its legs up over the eastern horizon for the last three weeks or so, which means only one thing.

What? you say. It means that winter is coming? We don’t need a some old constellation to tell us that. We’re not ancient Greeks or ancient Druids or ancient mariners. Whatever.

Well, yes, I know — we don’t need some old constellation to tell us that winter is coming, because winter comes along every year to rebuild our character. (How winter knows our character needs rebuilding each year I don’t know — probably something to do with string theory, like everything else — but each year, winter knows.)

No, Orion’s appearance is the ancient (there’s that word again) signal that Iowa Public Radio is plunging headlong into Pledge Week.

Now, let me be clear — I’m not opposed in theory to public radio going on the air and dunning us for money. Although I hear from my elders that there was once a day when public radio didn’t have Pledge Weeks. Those days, apparently, were back in our hunter-gatherer days, when we’d sit around the campfire after a hard day of hunting gatherers and listen to public radio without the threat of Ira Glass calling us up and accuse us of being deadbeats.

Being human beings, of course we weren’t satisfied with hunting gatherers, then gathering hunters, so we invented agriculture and rectangular abodes and then, cleverly enough, mortgages (death pledges, if you translate it literally, not that anybody does much anymore). Public-radio Pledge Week soon followed as naturally as winter following Orion.

Well, that’s the story my elders told me, anyway. And they’re mostly Irish, and we all know the Irish don’t lie. Unlike the English. (Pay no attention to the blarney behind the curtain.)

1-800-897-9204.

I’ve heard that pledge number so many times that I’ve started dreaming about it. I’ll wake up in the middle of the night seeing nothing but monsters from Where the Wild Things Are wearing New York Yankee caps and chanting 1-800-897-9204, 1-800-897-9204. I go to the window to check up on Orion — yep, there he is — and he whispers to me, 1-800-897-9204. Then I remember Orion is a hunter, and I start feeling like a gatherer.

Why don’t you just stop listening to public radio for a week? a friend asks me. At least you’ll get some sleep without all those monsters in Yankee caps.

I can’t. I can’t stop listening to public radio. I know, I’m an addict. I know, there’s a 12-step program for this. But if I don’t get my weekly fix of “This American Life,” I’ll wind up wandering the streets like a madman.

You already wander the streets like a madman, my friend says gently, and she looks at me sadly. Sisterly, even.

But I need to know about the crooked Afghan elections and the mire that the health-care debate has become, and I especially need moments such as this:

Last week, an Iowa Public Radio announcer, in trying to say “both chambers of Congress” instead uttered “both chambers of commerce.”

Which goes a long way in explaining why Congress works (if that’s the word) the way it does.

From the mouths of mistakes comes truth.

1-800-897-9204.

All right, all right already. I’m pledging. I’m pledging right now. Please don’t tell me that your budget has been “impacted,” because “impact” should never be used as a verb.

I’m pledging. Please don’t send Ira Glass after me.

1-800-897-9204.

Oh, shut up, Orion.