I went to see La Boem the other day and such a great opera. It doesn't matter that the

singers are not. And let me just say this at the beginning of the first and last acts set in the Garrett.

You got Rodolfo and Marcello and the guys, and there's no story, there's no purpose, there's nothing but vague

bohemianism until Mimi shows up and then the lights come on and it's like that in life too.

My opinion, okay?

Message plays that preach justice and equality are okay for college

sophomores, but the real story is about two opposites who fall in love and she's charming and he's jealous and they come crosswise and they hurt each other deeply

but in the end they're tied to each other.

Lovers are real, families are real. Families are real. Demonstrators? Not so much. These days were in the era of the

personal position statement as we saw in the recent

National Book Award Ceremony in New York. There is no National Book Award for Humor because the event is all about taking

ourselves very seriously as compensation for slights we have suffered from the

uncomprehending world. The winner of the Poetry Prize, for example, a man from Guam accepted it on behalf of the

Poets of the Pacific Islands, the Translation Award was accepted on behalf of gay men,

the Non- Fiction Award on behalf of Indigenous Peoples.

If I'd been given the National Book Award

for brief amusing essays,

I would have needed to accept it on behalf of recovering fundamentalists or overlooked

mid-Westerners or the marginalized octogenarian and nothing would be said about literary quality.

It was not always this way.

I remember loving Theodor Rathke's poetry,

not as vindication of the humanity of bipolar persons and James writes not as honoring the

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