Erzsébet

Finally what you need to know (thanks to Mary Cade for the research):
From: Gera Zósfia [mailto:gera.zsofia@mol.gov.hu]
Thursday, June 04, 2009 4:34 AM
Re: Diary of Erszebet Bathory

I kindly inform you that National Archives of Hungary preserves several documents regarding Countess Erzsébet BÁTHORY (Elizabeth BÁTHORY) for instance personal letters, and documents of the process against her. However, most of them aren't private documents, but sources of the procedure against Countess Báthory. The archival files of the Báthory family were mainly scattered during the 17th Century -- that's the reason why we don't have a separate collection of the Báthory family, or the diary of the countess.

Yours sincerely,
Zósfia Gera Updated April 2010

The opera has been premiered, and you'll be able to hear it soon on CD and DVD and for download. Sponsors can hear it immediately (sponsor on the home page). You can also bring Erzsébet to your own theater, and I certainly encourage that; it's a challenge that your musicians will love! The performances are very powerful and moving, and all the ambiguity of the Countess is present. I asked audience members after each show, "Did you hate her or love her?" and universally the answer has been "I loved her."

Aside from sponsoring the opera (which will clear the remaining debt from the productions) via the home page, you can also support the opera by buying the published libretto or full score, both on Lulu.com. Updated November 2011

[Former info:] You can't, at least not yet. I began this project almost 20 years ago, but producing an opera is a formidable task. It's not completely written. The libretto is stalled in outline. Neither the Slovak nor Hungarian culture ministries was interested in producing it, and the U.S. State Department (yes, they do have a big international arts support program) told me they only fund "American topics". If you are a benefactor interested in this dark and thrilling story, please contact me. In the meantime, you can listen to my maddened Csárdás, a dance not yet known in her time, but a sketch for the opera. It's also available from my home page, where you can download it and other pieces of my music. A new set of sketches, worked into the composition VoxN, was to be premiered in April 2002, but was not. I have instead begun developing this as a parallel 'virtual opera' project. New! You can listen to one scene from the opera from a recent rehearsal (Real Media Stream or Real Media Download or go here for other formats) and you can download a copy of the score (PDF). Updated May 2006

Who am I to sing. I cannot sing again.
I am Erzsébet.
I am Countess Báthory. I am a noblewoman.
Countess. I am Countess Báthory-Nadasdy.
Ferenc was my husband. I remember him.
Where are my children?
I am cold, not hungry, but cold--and sick.
What language are you? My native Magyar?
Perhaps German? Latin? Copernicus was my friend.
And the King my cousin. I am the Countess.
My children, where are they?
The barbarians...
I turned them back East, I turned them back West.
My tongue negotiated, my hand signed.
I turned back my enemies, and each others'.
Where are my children?
My servants are faithless. A few dead peasants.
Anna, sing to me, to me sing.
O Lord of Cats, sing to me.

Two addenda: 1. News media are welcome to request high-resolution copies of photographs for publication. 2. If you want to use something from my site on your website, read this now. Please do not use or link to photos without contacting me! Updated April 2003

Okay. Here is what I have been thinking about Erzsébet, as I wrote in an email to a friend when she asked me, "I am still struggling with her rage. Are you saying that she took her anger out on the victims? Why did she murder them? Because they failed to be properly beautiful? That's just doesn't seem enough to torture over 200. What do you understand about her disorder? What was her childhood like? Did some one show her what to do?"

This is the heart of the mystery of Erzsébet. No one knows these answers -- and there will be no real clues until we can read those diaries. What we do know is that Erzsébet was born into the most powerful family in Eastern Europe ... so great, they changed the name of the family to 'bathor' -- valiant. István (King Stephen the Great) ruled nearly all of present-day Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania. Erzsébet was reported to be precocious and exquisitely beautiful and transparently pale, china white ... the latter a characteristic of Hungarian beauty to this day. The skin seems so thin you can see the blood vessels under it even in the healthiest of children. She was educated in written and spoken Hungarian, Latin, and German, and was apparently fluent in all of them. She must also have had some knowledge of the language of the Ottomans (what was it then? Turkish?). She studied everything a Western boy-child might study, but in that more matriarchal society it was natural for her to do that. The men would fight. The women would negotiate. And that was one of her roles, keeping the Ottomans from Vienna for years. If you look at the geography of that area, you can see how the castles of the day formed a line along the formidable Vah, Vltava and Danube. That was her domain.

So if we think about her as not only beautiful among her own kin, but also made to believe that she was a truly great beauty, we can guess how she must have hated her servants at Cséjthe. They were Slovak -- coarse of demeanor by the standards of that time's often inbred Hungarian nobility. This prejudice becomes exaggerated because Hungarians are not Westerners, nor is their language. They look different, as I've said: paler, more delicate. And the language is very harmonious, part of the Finno-Ugric group (the only Western languages that do not arise originally from Sanskrit, and surviving today as Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, and Karelian). [Note March 2002: Jonathan Saxon tells me Finno-Ugric languages are still spoken in the Mari-El and Udmurt Republics in central Russia.] The accent is without exception on the first syllable, and prepositional agreement is harmonic -- that is, the prepositions (which appear appended to the end of words) must sound lovely with the noun they belong to, and different speakers may use different relationships to achieve that. So Erzsébet's native tongue was like song itself and her nobility was all a so-called 'translucent beauty'. But her servants were not only peasants, they were speakers of a Slavic language full of gutturals and hard consonants unknown in Hungarian, and they were coarse-skinned from her ethnically narrow viewpoint. She probably loathed them in look and sound and peasant smell.

That isn't enough, as you say, to torture and kill so many. So your word "disorder" has got to be included. I don't know how. Schizophrenia? To her family, she was an embarrassment -- power taken to extremes, once permitted because of her dominion and beauty. Later in life, as she became "very old" (over 50), and consumed by debt and making the mistake of killing Ilona Harczy (the minor Hungarian noblewoman in Vienna), she became politically vulnerable. She was taken to trial by Thurzo, the servants he hated were executed (along with Anna), and Erzsébet was imprisoned for more than two years in her own tower. How strong she still was to survive up there in that cold, alone, dirty and (eventually) sick to her death in 1614. That is the tower that still stands, and that you can see in my photos. It is a confounding sight, black even in the daylight. Updated April 2010

A recent correspondent objected in general to some of these thoughts. She wrote, "I am sure that Elisabeth, a noble woman, did not like the local poor people for various reasons, such as the language (she did not understand it very likely) and their harsh look and manners. Her attitude does not surprise me as it was natural for a person of her status. What does surprise me is your attitude to Slovak peasants - maybe I should say that it is the description and the final impression a visitor has after finishing reading the FAQ. You have described them in a way as if they were different (in a negative sense) from all other peasants - Hungarian, French or any other nationality. Your letter just suggests that peasants of other nationalities had soft skin, noble manners and smelled after expensive French parfumes. It is nonsense, naturally. These kinds of differences were due to the social status of the particular person, not his nationality."

To be clear, all Western peasants were comparatively coarse-skinned, not only Slovaks; however, for purposes of the opera, only Slovaks are of interest, as she had Austrian and Hungarian servants in the castles that are not part of the story I'm telling (I even relocated the singer from Austria). I had no reason to contrast the peasants' harsh manners with other nationalities any more than I had to contrast Erzsébet's nobility with other nationalities. (Would I be inclined to make the latter comparison, though, I would note that the Hungarian ethnic group, peasant or not, has extremely smooth skin in flat expanses, often considered the mark of beauty in the Western view.)

She continues, "My next comment concerns the musicality of the language. I am sure you are partial mainly because of your Hungarian roots. But I find expressing only your personal attitudes to Slovak and Hungarian languages unfair. Everybody likes his mother tongue best (even if English seems to be your mother tongue) but it does not give him any right to despise other languages or nations. Can you add into FAQ a note that most foreigners find Slovak folk songs really charming?"

Again, she is absolutely correct about song. But to restate my note above, Hungarian (which is not my mother tongue; English is, and my second languages are French and Dutch) and the other Finno-Ugric languages have characteristics which make them more akin to music as it is composed. That is, the languages are, in their native spoken state, more like musical expression to one who does not care about the meaning of the words. The consistent first syllable accent is one very interesting characteristic; the words contain their own downbeats, so to speak. The lack of gutturals and plosives is another; the former sound is absent, the latter suppressed (though these softenings are also noticeable in some French, Italian and Portuguese speakers). But for me, the third -- and foremost -- reason (speaking only of Hungarian here, because I'm not sure of the other three Finno-Ugric tongues) is that its grammatical inflection is harmonic in nature, and its diacritical marks (doubled vowels in Finnish) indicate differences in duration as well as timbre. This is a characteristic of no other Western languages, and very significant to me as a composer.

February 2003: Eydís Björnsdóttir recently wrote to amplify this: "All that you say about Hungarian, especially the parts about the emphasis being on the first syllable: Well, I do believe Iceland is one of the Western nations, and the Icelandic language does exactly have that characteristic. And in poetry based on old poetry 'rules', the rhythm of the language is highly important." Many thanks to Eydís for that information. (See more about language in Visitor Comments #4, below.)

My goal is not to defend Erzsebet, but to explain, in terms of breaking down unsupportable mythology and replacing it with a different one, more based on what can be ascertained about her behavior in more modern terms. Remember I'm writing an opera, not a history book.

Sometimes it gets just plain weird, like this one: "First of all, yes you do 'glorify' her. You admire her avarice and power, latent or expressed. There is another issue besides 'blood' and 'ghosts.' There are people out there who are psychopaths. They should not be glorified. If you have ever experienced the suffering and loss of life-direction at the hands of a psychopath (whether murdering, cannibal, or just entrapping, using and ruining), it's very serious and very real. Maddening--incredibly horrible to any socially inclined person. I'm still looking for some commentary on your site that would explain how monsterous 'Bathory' was. The 'thing' (not person) was a monster. That so-called nobility permitted this to occur...and why does this always seem to come from Hungary and Romania. What's with you 'people?' Are you all carnivores?"

Weird or not, let me take this on a little. First of all, this modern-day politically correct prattle is an infection. "Entrapping"? "Ruining"? "Life-direction"? Kids are being taught this stuff. Yuck.

But to the topic: Nobility (if that's the word) nowhere in the world seems to have been immune from these predilections. The old testament is full of personal slaughter. What were the crusades but legitimized slaughter? The ritualized lynchings in near-modern America? Sometimes it's a religion -- Torquemada and his inflamed minions of death -- sometimes a title -- Henry VIII and his murderous impulses toward his wives, and who knows how many anonymous servants, while being a writer and composer -- and sometimes the madness in modern times is disguised in political/ideological terms, such as the lunatic behavior made manifest in rulers such as Pol Pot or Stalin or Idi Amin or Mao ... or yet still in personal one-on-one Erzsébet-like behavior (less the literally bloody hands) as in a Mengele. All, yes, modern people in modern dress with ancient madness.

The world is made up of the psychopaths. Where we deviate from the norm, we show, in such political terms, anti-social behavior, and when we repeat it, anti-social pathology. Where it arises out of mental aberration (as an artist, I am by definition aberrant), it's psychopathological, an ongoing life's work of insanity. Everyone is a psychopath at some level. Sports are psychopathic manifestations. When employees lives are left in ruins by ravenous corporate executives, it's because of psychopaths at work. Cops who beat and maim suspects until they're dead are among them, as are mothers who drown their children one by one, and terrorists who dump feeble humans off cruise ships in the apotheosis of a vacation. Certainly all, yes, manifesting the madness, and there's an opera about that last one ("The Death of Klinghoffer").

What the bruised and battered and damaged goods among us must know is that Erzsébet's acts of long ago are gone, taking with them and her both her own malevolence and the anguish of her victims. Now she can speak only through artists and writers like me, and our self-styled obligation is to re-interpret humanity for our fellow humans, escape it though you desire. We are far from her time, but we have not grown consistently well as a species.

But no, the opera -- and the distant story of her life -- is no morality play. It's a thrilling and horrifying story by which we learn if we have separated ourselves from our demons. We ask again and again and again. And discover again and again and again that we have not. How else would we artists have given birth to Dracula and Frankenstein and fearsome modern Hannibal Lecters and even the more mundane Freddies and Chuckies? We are fascinated, hypnotized, by the incomprehensibly horrible. And we, as artists, swim in that rank pool of horror so that you need do little more than read or hear or watch the summarized and sanitized result that may raise momentarily a hair on your neck. (Between snacks. And emails upbraiding us.)

So when someone writes to me as they have in this note, they reveal a clear misunderstanding not only of art, but demonstrate also a psychopathic, if you will, focus on the centrality of their own existence in their own world, and their simple-minded weakness in facing what it is to be human.

I ran across your page by accident (attracted to the Hungarian name in my daughter's links to free sheet music), was intrigued enough by your list of compositions and lectures to search google for more about you and found the Erszébet opera site.

I just wanted to comment on the question of emphasis in Hungarian vs. Icelandic. Not that I'm an expert, or particularly qualified. I have studied both languages but have no real fluency in either. The point that Eydís misses is that, while in Icelandic there is emphasis on the first syllable of every word, the emphasis alternates through the rest of the word, as is frequently found in English. So, the 3rd, 5th, 7th, etc. syllables are also emphasized. What you get then, is natural iambics that match the stresses in our most prevalent musical meter - 4/4 time. No wonder it's called "common."

This, of course, is not the case in Hungarian, where only the first syllable is emphasized. This is what gives these Finno-Ugric languages that strange (to western ears) singing but monotonous (literally) quality. Of course, this is the characteristic that makes it pretty much impossible for us non-native speakers of Hungarian to ever speak it well.

I have a friend whose first language is Estonian and who was a foreign exchange student in Finland. She assures me that the emphasis is only on the first syllable in Estonian and in Finnish, as in Hungarian. Estonian also has the longer duration associated with long vowels, like Finnish and Hungarian.

As for the "old poetry rules"--they involve two different sets of alliterative consonants in the two halves of each line, internal assonance, and "kenning," where the poet substitutes metaphors for everything possible, thus making the meaning so obscure that only gnostics can understand what it's about!

One last thing--I don't want to bore you or take up more of your time--but I think you do a great job in the FAQ of answering those who criticize your failure to condemn Erszébet. I don't understand why it is that our society believes that every possible fictional and public figure must be a role model, represent an ethnic or national group, or make an overt political statement. Who is so stupid or unimaginative that they want to imitate all of the actions of someone in sports, politics, a book, or a movie? I have tried several times to start reading groups (just to have someone to talk to about books) only to discover that most people are unable to read or discuss any piece of literature except as a personal self-help guide. Frankly, it had never occurred to me to read Lolita as a sociological text...

Anyway, bravo to you for plowing forward, at whatever pace you can manage, in your musical career.

Köszönöm és jó estét.

John Kahila adds:

As you say, in Finnish the stress is invariably on the first syllable. Also in Estonian, which is closely related. I don't have personal familiarity with other Finno-Ugric languages such as Hungarian, but it doesn't surprise me to learn that they follow the same stress rule.

And, as one of your correspondents says, other syllables within a word are not stressed, which can cause Finnish speech to sound oddly monotone to someone accustomed to Indo-European languages. (But it doesn't sound that way to me -- I adore the sound of spoken Finnish.)

However, Finnish also permits words to be strung together in long compounds. In compounds, the initial syllable of the first component receives a strong stress, and the initial syllables of the remaining components receive a weaker stress. For example, among Helsinki's many architecturally interesting sites is Temppeliaukiokirkko, the "temple square church" (usually translated into English as Rock Church), which is carved out of native bedrock. Pronounced TEMP-pel-li-Au-ki-o-Kirk-ko. (Reference)

Disclaimer: I'm not much of a Finnish speaker. My father's parents spoke Finnish (grandfather Erkki emigrated to the USA from a small town on the west coast of Finland). I lived in Helsinki for a couple of years while in graduate school, but almost everyone who graduates from high school speaks English there, so there wasn't a lot of incentive to go beyond basic tourist language. I'm somewhat better at reading it, though.

The assumption that there must have been some 'sane' reason behind her killings is just an extension of gender-role prejudice that holds that women are incapable of killing for its own sake.

Additional insights from Ryan

A couple of months ago i stumbled upon a story about Erzsbet, about the apparent murders she commited. I researched her a lot and from your site, other sources and looking at her portrait i have been able to create an idea of who she was.

Now i'm not sure if you get this a lot but ever since i first read her story she has always been on my mind in some form and I'm afraid i am infatuated by this woman.

From the information i have read i have forever kept in the forefront of my mind that 'It is the victors who write history'. From this i can derive that not all the information available to us is true and much of it fiction.

I believe the bathing in blood is an outstreched rumour. I believe she only commited a few murders out of what could be called 'innocence' and because she could. I do not for a second belive that she did any of the crimes she was accused of. It was all to do with politics as many things are. She was set up by those closest to her, those who she and her husband might have trusted once upon a time. But because we enjoy Legends more than we do good people we are blinded by lies.

From looking into her eyes in the portrait it is easy to see the love and sadness she contained.

Notes from Dave about men and women and Erzsébet

You say not many men, are really that into the countess. Well, you have now met one. I will explain it like this, first, you find a persons story rather interesting, you start reading about her, then, you start reading everything there is to read on the internet, and everywhere else, you dream about her, its as if you really know her, especially the more you learn about her, i highly disagree, when you say, she was very contraind by royalty. i would dare to say, while she was royalty, she had the power, to do whatever she wanted, and she did. that goes sexually as well. it was well known for her to spend many times with her aunt Klara, which you know, im sure. and her entire entourage, was of "different" sort of people. just about every person she had around her was considered a witch, devil worshipper or some sorta deviant. she was attracted to those kinda people. my opinion of her, was she was constraind, when she had to be. Like we all are at work. the reports of wild orgies, that were witnessed by the raiders of her castle on 1610. My attraction to her, is her power, you didnt dare say no to her. she was undoubtedly a very beautiful woman. and her incredibly intelligence only adds to her attraction, combined with her dark side, is just an irresistble combination. you have now met a man, that can equal any womans fascination or love for her.

Drago has ideas about her personality

I'm not exactly sure how I came across your website or how I became interested in Erzsebet Bathory, but I think that I may have discovered some insight into her behavior. I picked up McNally's "Dracula Was a Woman" book in a used book store while on a business trip in San Fran. Some things which caught my eye were ...

• Elizabeth had violent seizures where she would pass out
• She suffered ts of uncontrollable rage
• There are certain forms of epilepsy which create short-circuits in the brain resulting in a violent temper. A normal person goes through the various stages from mild annoyance, to anger, to rage. A person with this epileptic disorder instantly jumps from calm to rage.

The best example that I can give would be to place a pot of water on the stove. Even with the flame at full force, it will take some time for the water to come to a boil. That would be considered a normal person gradually going through the stages of annoyance, anger, fury.

A person with this epileptic disorder, however, would be like a pot of water that is already simmering. Even a slight increase in the flame will instantly cause the pot to boil over.

While it is impossible to know for certain, it sounds like Erzsebet Bathory suffered from this type of disorder. If so, she was not responsible for her actions. She had a temper with a mind of it's own. The least little annoyance to her wishes was like turning up the flame on that simmering pot of water causing her to boil over with rage.

And while she may not have been responsible for her action, it does not minimize those actions but on the contrary, it intensifies them. Not only did the girls physically suffer from her wrath but the psychological fear they must have had of the Countess's ungovernable temper must have been unbelievable never knowing when some minor thing would send her into a rage.

Feel free to use any of this information if you believe it will add additional insight into this poor woman and perhaps paint her in a less than horrible light.

Mennas also has an opinion

Someone suggested that Elizabeth was a psychopath. If so, that makes her an extremely - *extremely* rare case of a psychopathic *female* serial killer.

Psychopaths are arguably the biggest problem we have in society today. (See the books by Dr. Hare, "Without Conscience" and "Snakes in Suits", for details). Their characteristics are very poorly understood and they have only recently been identified as what may very well be a defective subspecies of humans (although that conclusion is hotly debated as you might well imagine).

If in fact Elizabeth was a psychopath, the study of her diaries becomes of critical importance. A trained psychiatrist familiar with psychopaths, would be greatly interested in them, and could probably extract from them the details necessary to make a determination in Elizabeth's case. Any student in psychiatry or even psychology could get a PhD. for translating and analyzing them. In fact, if she was not a psychopath, her behavior may be even more interesting from a psychiatric standpoint.

I read on the Internet somewhere that her diaries have been stolen from the archives. The idea of that is truly horrifying. If in truth we have lost the diaries of a psychopathic medieval female serial murderer, the loss to psychatric research is incalculable. I am sure there are armies of idiotic "Goth"-obsessed idiots out there who would consider it a big thrill to steal them even though they cannot read them (for reasons known only to someone as stupid as a "Goth", all whom are collectively sharing an IQ smaller than any of their shoe sizes).

It may interest you personally that there is the usual debate over "nature" vs. "nurture", as far as how psychopaths become what they are. The consensus seems to be that they are born that way, which raises another question - whether the trait(s) corresponding to psychopathy can be inherited.

I've been in contact with the National Archives in Hungary, and the "diaries" which every legend of Elizabeth places such emphasis on, in which she details acts of torture and murder, do not exist and there is no evidence that they ever did. [Note: It appears John is right; see Diaries info above in the FAQ]

The court records reference testimony of such diaries, but this was clearly a show trial, designed to enable the King to be cleared of his debt to her, and confiscate her property. All testimony was given under torture, or the threat of torture, and must therefore be disregarded.

I'm sure she was cruel by modern standards, as was everyone else who lived in that place and time, but if we start with a presumption of her innocence, and then look for evidence of her guilt, we come up empty handed.

I don't object to any work, such as yours, which clearly labels itself as fiction, but many works which label themselves as nonfiction continue to spread the same ridiculous legends.

From an atheistic standpoint maybe they are not harming Elizabeth by further perpetuating the myth, but doesn't truth hold some value for its own sake. Slandering and libeling an actual person, even one long dead, cannot be good.

I'm not a hardline atheist. What if Elizabeth exists in some hereafter and suffers from her false legacy of evil?

Johnny C takes this approach...

I think her crimes can be seen as related to the aftermath of the war known as the Long War that led to the sharp decline of her family's power in Transylvania and other parts of Europe. She lived in what was known as Royal Hungary and you've pointed out that she was a negotiator who kept the Turks out of Vienna, and I've read in a translated Slovakian article that Cachtice was raided by the Turks in 1599, which was at the height of the Long War.

The Long War started in 1593 when her uncle Sigismund Bathory joined forces with both the Habsburgs and Michael the Brave of Wallachia. They recaputured almost all of modern-day Romania and successfully defended Royal Hungary from the Ottoman armies, but Michael's territorial ambitions led him to betray the Bathorys and invade Transylvania before he was in turn betrayed by an unscrupulous Habsburg general named Giorgio Basta who took advantage of the power struggle between Michael and the Hungarian royal families in Transylvania by assassinating the former and killing off the latter. This is where the war took a turn for the worst for everyone except the Habsburgs. It led to a Hungarian anti-Habsburg uprisings until the war was concluded in 1606, but more would follow (all were put down).

The result of the war was that the Turks recognized the Habsburgs as equals for the first time in history, but also that the Habsburgs were able to liquidate Magyar power. My question is, how much of this do you think had anything to do with her crimes? Her killing spree didn't really begin until her husband died at around the same time Giorgio Basta was killing off all the old Transylvanian noble families. The Habsburg king refused to pay her back at a time when she had just helped save Vienna and was already in a desperate situation financially and otherwise. There is no doubt in my mind that her crimes were somehow influenced by the devastation and betrayal that the war brought her and her once-powerful family, and when she was eventually punished it signalled the end of an era in the region. It's a shame people only focus on sensational stories about her being a serial killer in the sense we'd think of today, which are just that and stem from gossip that lingered after it was forbidden to speak her name.

Finally, for now, Marsha writes this:

I wanted to thank you for your profound response to one of your FAQs. The specific passage of yours that stopped me in my tracks was, in part, "...by which we learn if we have separated ourselves from our demons. We ask again and again and again. And discover again and again and again that we have not. How else would we artists have given birth to Dracula and Frankenstein and fearsome modern Hannibal Lecters and even the more mundane Freddies and Chuckies? We are fascinated, hypnotized, by the incomprehensibly horrible. And we, as artists, swim in that rank pool of horror so that you need do little more than read or hear or watch the summarized and sanitized result that may raise momentarily a hair on your neck." I was reading on imdb.com some comments by moviegoers who were upset by violence in (fill in the blank of whatever movie you care to, as I no longer remember what the fuss was about), and someone commented that they could handle violence as long as they knew it was a story, but not if they knew they were watching real pain and suffering. I concur that it is possible to be an aberrant artist--and an empathetic, compassionate person with a conscience--but to also be able to take people places all in the name of exploring the nature of horror, and to use the past, real people and situations, in a way that is enlightening and can be handled by most viewers cottoned in the gauze known as art. Anyway, thank you for all you are doing to handle inquiries in an intelligent, intellectual, thoughtful and meaningful way.

Thanks very much, Marsha. It beats getting hate mail!