A LETTER TO DONNA LEON

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Dear Donna Leon,

Today's "Guardian" published a list of the recipients of this year's MacArthur genius grants. I didn't see your name on the list, but surely that was an oversight. Had I been on the committee, you certainly would have been there. 

As smitten as I am by the preternaturally decent Commissario Brunetti, I am loving the frankness of your "My Venice." I see that you've gotten plenty of flack for being "unapologetically opinionated" about loud, fat, ignorant Americans and more, but so what? Some of us try not to, but we can be that way. 




As a musician, I love hearing about your passion for Baroque opera. The increased graying of heads among classical music enthusiasts worries me, too. Where I live in Italy, it's currently hunting season, a phenomenon at which you take deadly aim. I'm with you on that. I can't even conceive of preferring the sound of gunshots to that of Handel's  
"How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things." 

The same "Guardian" newspaper that posted the MacArthur grantees was also full of plenty of bad tidings of the bad things happening around the world. "Bang, bang, bang"? Or Kiri te Kanawa?  From where I sit, the  choice is obvious.


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