Paris is still very much on my mind after my visit last December, so when I came across this article by Adam Gopnik today, I just had to link to it here. It just ran in the Guardian newspaper in the UK in conjunction with an "Americans in Paris" exhibit at the National Gallery in London, and is excerpted from an introduction to a literary anthology of the same name. Gopnik has written many pieces for the New Yorker over recent years, and his observations on both visual art and the city of Paris are keenly perceptive. This piece is very much in the same vein, well worth a read.

New Chief Justice Roberts wrote the opinion yesterday for a unanimous Supreme Court decision that the adherents of a small New Mexico religious sect could continue to use hallucinogenic tea as a part of their religious rituals without fear of legal reprisal.

My father died at 5:10 AM last Friday morning, Feb. 10, after nearly a month's stay at Carolinas Medical Center-Mercy Hospital in Charlotte. He was 92 years old. Yesterday was the funeral, and our family was so gratified and touched to see a number of friends and colleagues of his, who had come to pay their respects, even some who had not seen him in years. We took comfort, too, in our family being able to gather together for the service, including my mother, my wife, my brother and his wife and three children. It was a very special service, and though my brother and I tried to convey a bit of who Newell Bush was, it was my 14-year-old niece Alexa who stole the show, assuring us all that her grandfather would be with her in spirit always, remembering him as "ridiculously smart" and "hilarious." I think Dad would have liked that.

It's too soon to be able to properly put down the right words here to express all that he meant to me. Right now the thought that is growing ever larger in my mind since Friday is just how fortunate he was, how blessed to have such a long and interesting life, and how the end came in a way that he practically would have scripted. He was independent nearly to the end, living with my mom in their split-level house and going up and down the stairs to his bedroom several times a day, right up until his hospitalization Jan. 16. Even at the hospital, though his physical strength was ebbing, his mind stayed clear, again just about to the very end, which came peacefully in his sleep. He was so very ready to go, and not afraid in the least, as he made very clear to me on many many occasions.

It had become a running joke in our family: you'd mention some city that you had just visited or driven through, and Dad would say, "Yep, I spent a summer studying there in, let's see, was that '35 or '36?" or "yeah, I taught there for a year just before the war..." or something to that effect. I kept thinking, if you added all these chapters of his life together, it was too much for one lifetime surely, it just couldn't possibly add up mathematically...but in submitting his obituary, it really sank in, what a hell of a long life the guy lived. If you would like to read it, here is the link to the obituary that ran in the Charlotte Observer last Sunday. Those of you who know me really well may also know what a gifted pianist my Dad was. We sent him on his way yesterday to the sounds of the young Frank Sinatra with Tommy Dorsey's big band, singing "Stardust." It was Dad's signature tune...I think that whatever dimension he was in by yesterday morning, he was enjoying it very much.

Just recently came across this item in the Daily Telegraph of London, about the ban on Western music imposed in December by Iran's Supreme Cultural Revolutionary Council...The writer, Ivan Hewitt, while expressing the natural outrage most of us in the West would feel at hearing about this edict, admits however to "a sneaking respect for a world-view which gives music such massive importance." I had the same feeling when I heard of the ban. For so many people in the US, I fear, classical music has become at best a trotting out of familiar warhorses, at worst a good thing to put on as calming background music on the radio while doing the household chores.

With all the Mozart happening in Columbia in these last few days of the SC Mozart Festival, I'm reminded of a moment last October. I was at the Art Museum attending one of Charles Wadsworth's chamber music concerts, listening with rapt attention to a Mozart violin-viola duet, played with a passionate intensity by Soovin Kim and Ida Kavafian. The sinuous harmonic traversals, the strong character of each instrument within the duo, the at-times surprising mass of sound emanating from just the two instruments...I was on the edge of my seat until the very end, when I joined in with the enthusiastic applause around me. The lady next to me, while applauding along with everyone else, leaned over to me and said, "I just LOVED that...it's so soothing, isn't it?" My heart sank, wishing so very much that this woman could have enjoyed the drama and tension of that music as much as I did. But then again, when you put a Mozart duo for two string instruments up against the ear-splitting Coming Attractions at your Local Movie Theater, or the cacophony of people shouting at each other you usually find at most restaurants, I suppose that it IS soothing by comparison. (Stay tuned for a future blog about increasing hearing loss among Americans, something I always suspected and which is now beginning to be documented factually.)

In any case, who am I to demand that my neighbor like Mozart for "only the right reasons"? She heard it on her own terms, as all listeners must, and evaluated the experience likewise. Perhaps this is the real subversive threat of Western classical music that Iran "gets" : its assertion of the legitimacy of individual experience and interpretation.

Early on in his State of the Union address last evening, President Bush said "We love our freedom, and we will fight to keep it." Well, Mr. President, indeed we do love our freedom, and yes, we absolutely WILL fight to keep it, whether you like it or not.