Mario, your namesake was, in most respects, a very smart man. He just had this wierd blind-spot about the arts. I don't know if culture is the soul of a country. I think that's a very complicated question. Most of all, I think that just by stamping our feet and saying it, we are going to get nowhere. We need to think critically and express ourselves creatively about the role of those arts which cannot succeed in the marketplace. And this in a country where, increasingly, the marketplace has replaced the deity as "the invisible hand." Eric Siegel [log in to unmask]