Letters: Help support Chicago’s world-class music scene

SHARE Letters: Help support Chicago’s world-class music scene
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Mark Kelly, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s choice to serve as commissioner of the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, prepares to testify at his City Council confirmation hearing Monday. | Fran Spielman/Sun-Times

Mark Kelly, Chicago’s newly appointed commissioner of cultural affairs and special events, described his important wishes to develop the city’s connection to diverse forms of music. He recognizes the significance to any civilized world of a major connection to the musical arts.

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Apropos that, I, as a lifelong chamber-music cellist, am prompted to support his crucial vision by adding the following:

Composer Richard Strauss proclaimed, “Music is how our feelings sound.”

The late conductor Claudio Abbado taught, “We learn how to talk, but we don’t learn how to listen.”

The iconic cellist Pablo Casals prophesized, “It will perhaps be music that will save the world.”

Chicago has some of the world’s greatest musical venues. Few cities on the planet can compete with what we offer musically. Let us give Commissioner Kelly whatever support he seeks to actualize his laudable goals.

Leon J. Hoffman, Lake View

Restful news

After five years I can finally get a good night’s sleep since it is now official that Barack Obama was born in the United States.

Gerald Weisberg, Lake View

Get serious

The election is less than two months away and it’s time to get serious about electing a president.

Trump has provided a lot of circuses, i.e. insults, lies on an epic scale, policies that change daily, and rumor mongering times 10. It’s been amusing, but it’s time to face facts. The man is arrogant and egoistical. He has no coherent policies and is uninformed. He makes statements and promises that have no basis in fact.

He promises to kick butt and work miracles but he can’t say how. All he will do is lose the economic gains made by the Obama administration. America’s median household income increased by 5.2 percent in 2015 — the LARGEST annual uptick since records have been kept! He can’t beat this actual record of success.

He will muzzle the press, privatize Social Security and Medicare, defund the Affordable Care Act, fight wars at the drop of an insult and who knows what else?

Hillary is smart, solid and sensible. If you disagree with her policies, a GOP Congress will hold the line. But we can’t elect a demagogue!

Carol Kraines, Deerfield

Big lie

After five years — five years of berating and discrediting the president, Donald J Trump finally admitted he was wrong and Barrack Obama is a legitimate citizen of the

United States.

Typically, he said it without the slightest hint of remorse or apology — that is simply not his style (and it seems it never will be unless, or until, he is made accountable for his deception).

The “big lie” is nothing new to the political world, it didn’t begin with Trump and it won’t end with him either, win or lose. But he has taken dishonesty to depths unimagined by political figures of the past.

Trump’s fabrications and distorted views of history make him a menace to truth-seekers and fact-checkers alike. If his ultimate purpose in this election is to confuse and anger voters, he has already succeeded. He’s not about to allow the truth, or policy details, impede the progress of his take-over of the public conscience.

He is utilizing all of the techniques of the master magician — the slight-of-hand, the misdirection, the marked cards. But in the end they are nothing more than tricks, meant to cheat the crowd out of their sense of reality while seizing upon their fear.

He is the magical wizard behind the velvet curtains, pulling the the levers and cajoling us into believing that it is all so very real.

Bob Ory, Elgin

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