Marching to a Different Tune

Readers should take care not to conclude from Gene Weingarten's wonderful "Pearls Before Breakfast" [Magazine, April 8] that federal bureaucrats (such as me) are a pack of cultural illiterates.

Rather, the Magazine's elegant subway experiment teaches us that the value of one individual to another lies not in the elitist cachet that select segments of our society self-servingly assign to individuals such as violinist Joshua Bell but in the utility that any individual has in relation to the next item on our daily to-do lists. If we have a toothache, we value the competence of our dentist. If we are in a hurry to get to work, we value the competence of the Metro train operator. If we are hungry for uplifting music, we value the competence of a Joshua Bell performance or CD.

-- Dennis Askwith

Gaithersburg

This Magazine "experiment" was set up to fail. As one who rides the Metro to work, I can tell you that no one stops and congregates at the stations in the morning; people barely break stride to grab the handout newspapers. Stopping to listen to a musician, no matter how good, would create congestion and make people late for work.

Had Joshua Bell played on the platform, it would have been different. It would also have been different had he played in the evening.