Letters, we get letters

First, a very nice shout out from Chicago Opera Theater's Brian Dickie (at left) from his pioneering Chicago weblog. Merci bien!

We don't run comments here on The View from Here for all kinds of reasons, but we do accept, and even invite, them. Having yesterday rounded the 50-plus-posts mark, we thought we'd share what we've heard thus far:

Some young pups wrote early on (we very-soft-launched on January 30) with the slogan "Turn on the comments!" See above.

On March 24, five folks wrote in to say "thank you" for our Barack Obama and the South Side essay, including three people previously unknown to me with Chicago connections, a New Yorker transplanted to Los Angeles, also previously unknown to me, who regrets the lack of Midwestern civility in those two cities, and an old comrade-in-arms from Hyde Park activism days, Tom Panelas. Thanks to you all. We're sure that there were people with contrasting views but either they share them only in unregulated sandboxes or they just kept them to themselves for whatever reasons.

On April 6, the proprietor of a conservative weblog wrote to say that she liked our Charlton Heston memories. We also had a lot of positive e-mail (as opposed to comments via the weblog site) on this one.

On April 9, Jim Ginsburg, founder and president of Chicago's Cedille Records and all-around mensch, wrote to say "thank you" for our calling attention to the Chicago Tribune's inexcusable behavior towards violinist and serious-accident survivor Rachel Barton Pine and for our friend and colleague Marc Geelhoed's own post on this sad story of the abdication of journalistic responsibility by the Tribune and its editors.

Young Pup No. 1 (left, with Pyramids) wanted to know on April 10 why we put "Chicago Children's Museum" in quotes in our Save Grant Park! post. 'Nuff said.

And this week the co-proprietor of a controversial website that picks apart and makes fun of those of us in the classical music criticism business liked our Pierre-Laurent Aimard review but suggested that "ensemble[s] of recorders" playing Art of Fugue be excluded from our "the more Bach we can hear on the more types of instruments the better" principle. "Empiricus," we're with you on this one!

Thanks! And keep them coming!