And why do the people imagine a vain thing?

Questions from the libretto of Handel's Messiah, which I heard at Carnegie Hall last night. I've been depressed lately about our American talent for fixating on trivia to the exclusion of what matters. And this shopping season isn't helping. There's a war on, but we're supposed to run out and buy SUVs to use up the oil we'll soon be safely buying from Iraq. The new "Freedom Tower" for lower Manhattan was just unveiled, but neither it nor any of the memorial designs make any reference to either the horror or the heroism of Sept. 11th. (This was not true of the original Liebeskind design for the site, by the way, which was quite moving.) What terrorist threat have we stopped, now that we've been in Afghanistan two years? Can my nephews, my great-niece, my goddaughter look forward to a safer future since we went into Iraq? Are we being encouraged to consider any of these questions, to meditate, to contemplate, this season? No, just to buy. So I went to hear The Messiah, mostly to remind myself what we're capable of -- the genius of the music itself, and the thrill of working together that orchestra and chorus members feel. This is the same thrill team sports gives me, which is why I got up at 7:30 this morning to go play basketball.