LETTERS: WEEK ENDED BETTER THAN IT BEGAN

To the editor:

Mary Ann Fischer told me as we were in the Rotary lunch line that there had been a shooting at a school in Paducah. Since then, all of us have learned details too well and are left wondering about our culture which has produced such tragedy.

But Saturday night we were home again after attending the Central High School madrigal songfest and supper. The singing, the songs themselves, many five centuries old, the warm ambience of being with friends, the memories of our own high school days and choral groups -- the week ended much better than it began.

A recent editorial in a New York paper entitled "The Death of European Culture" will not pass from my mind. The writer makes a sobering case: Serious music is disappearing -- rock 'n' roll for two generations, impossibly lewd lyrics, scrapping of much of the great music from the past, the growth of illiteracy in which students are excused from learning serious math, and when they flunk in reading the tests are changed so they can pass. The only heroes of our time, and they are enormous, are from sports and packaged entertainment, both absurdly overpaid. There is casual acceptance of gambling. There is plenty to lament.

But the CHS madrigal brought up the best of the past and revealed again the treasures which support us. Can you imagine a world without "Silent Night" and the "Hallelujah Chorus"? Can your recall a better time than that frosty night when you and your friends sang "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing"? If students kill their classmates, perhaps it is because -- not genetically macho -- they have been nurtured in a society in which macho is all and gentleness and love count for nothing.

If sports officials cheat, maybe it is because of the enormous pressures forced upon them by the rest of us, who feel that basketball is life's greatest good. The songs we heard at the madrigal were composed a century or more before anyone missed a free throw.

We learned that night that Aunt Clara had died. She was the last of my company of uncles and aunts and their spouses, 32 in all. When I was in high school, it did not occur to me that any of them would ever die.

May you have a merry Christmas.

PETER HILTY

Cape Girardeau