Letters to the Editor
Readers write about climate-change regulation, US-Libya relations, Western art, and wrapping paper.
Don't wait for climate-change regulation. Conserve now.
In response to the Dec. 21 article, "After EPA rejects California, emissions court battle looms": Regulations are fine, but more immediate "bird-in-hand" action should be taken.
For example, alternate energy sources such as the Cape Wind Project should be promoted more aggressively.
Conservation efforts can take place immediately while regulations and schemes, which may or may not be practical, will take years to be effective.
Bob Brown
Reading, Mass.
On Libya, make the enemy a friend
In response to David Schenker's Dec. 17 Opinion piece, "Libya doesn't deserve the red carpet," Mr. Schenker asks, "Why restore relations?" One answer is: One way to get rid of an enemy is to make a friend.
Dan Ziskind
Longboat Key, Fla.
How to judge art
Regarding Carol Strickland's Dec. 20 Opinion piece, "Does beauty still belong in art?," I have a PhD in musicology, and I have published on Beethoven's Eroica Symphony with Cambridge University Press. I am thus familiar with the comment by art critic Clement Greenberg that Ms. Strickland cites: "All profoundly original art looks ugly at first." One contemporary critic actually labeled Beethoven's Third Symphony "an abortion."
But that does not justify equating art with journalism, as Strickland seems to do. The simplistic definition of "good art" that Strickland provides is actually a definition of "good journalism": "[It] grabs our attention, then deepens our engagement with multiple layers that expand our knowledge of the world and ourselves, and make us see and feel and think in different ways."
Journalism is meant to be transitory. Perhaps it involves a flowery article enticing a reader to a certain travel destination or unusual cuisine. Perhaps it is a hard-hitting report describing the recent humanitarian crimes in Somalia or Sudan.
We do not, nevertheless, treasure it beyond the immediate effect it is meant to create (or its retrospective historical value). We do not equate a finely crafted article in the Monitor with a sonnet by Shakespeare. There is a substantive, qualitative difference that needs to be addressed, and an art critic for the Monitor certainly ought to be aware of that difference.
Art is supposed to deliver a more profound message – one that will do exactly all that, to be sure, but also for generations to come.
Thus, however ugly it may seem to some of us, it will sooner or later be acknowledged as "beautiful," in the historically and anthropologically sensitive use of the term.
Thomas Sipe
Grosse Pointe Woods, Mich.
In response to Carol Strickland's series on "art in America" regarding Western art: As an art teacher, I appreciate her comment that arts education should not be optional.
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