I am not suggesting running away from the problem, rather refusing to be drawn in to a sound bite debate. Civility has been too long gone from our political discourse and I believe that engaging with those who believe that the loudest and/or nastiest voice is the way to prove themselves right is akin to trying to teach a pig to sing.

Dear Martin,

Yes, the logic of insisting on bankruptcy rather than negotiating a new loan based on reduced principal (but still more than the price of the house on the auction block) may make sense re: the balance sheet of the bank, but as you infer it’s all in how we keep track of Profit. For a more basic (il)logic of the profit system, please see the column of February 23, “Money or Wealth,” especially the poem that begins the piece.

Peace and poetry,
Mort

However, I will be mailing you half my paycheck. You covered in your response all the things I did not mention but wanted to.

And you pointed out that not only did the staging not adhere “truthfully” to the words in the libretto – but it did not adhere “truthfully” to the basic elements of “proper” staging based on feelings and emotions.

Please do not contact the editor and offer your expertise. She might fire me..

Barry

Do they even read the librettos? How dare they have Dessay needlessly traipsing around the stage while doing vocal acrobatics knowing that it will compromise her voice. Especially since she has had her share of vocal surgeries in recent years. Yes, she can sing while laying upside down, but is it good for her to tax her instrument unduly? Or is she competing with the Delilah who climbed a 30-foot ladder and did a split while singing her aria. I watched with binoculars with horror as Dessay ran around the shards of the broken glass barefoot (even if it was plastic, really!)! Has it come to this?

By the end, I was so hellbent on enjoying the last scene that I made it a point to not let the stage design or the staging ruin it for me. Perhaps that’s what happened to you, too.

We opera singers spend our whole career learning to do the roles to be true to the composers’ intentions, phrasing and stage movement, and making the words in their librettos count. I find it insulting that we have to endure this narcissism in which stage directors and designers jeopardize the singers well-being to be noticed by the critics.

Barry

Dear Tracey —

The 1% may have the dollars, whatever their worth of late, but we 99% have the people, the imagination, and the talent. We can take the values the fat cats profess — self reliance, entrepreneurship, family farms, buy local campaigns… and turn them into actual entities that will give capitalism a run for its money: state banks and non-profit credit unions, worker owned factories, large farmers’ markets, CSAs, and urban food co-ops, and whatever other enterprises we think up. We already have a head start with many examples up and running.

Politically, we already have an alternative party that will look after the environment and see to policies that that benefit the public — the Green Party.

In addition, we can depend on the greed after money & power that drive the 1%. They will test the limits of legality and acceptability and will overreach. For prime examples try: Richard Nixon, Enron, House Whip (or Hammer) Tom DeLay, Bernie Madoff, Gov Scott Walker (WI), Gov Bob McDonnell (VA), Rush Limbaugh, and others to come.

Your characterization of the fat cat cyst-em is right on — it’s pathological.

Peace and parody,
Mort