I’d like to publish a letter that may amuse you — though it has a serious aspect. First, the context. In my Impromptus yesterday, I said that, over the weekend, I had seen Mozart Street in Chicago. I was pleased to see a Mozart Street. I don’t think I had ever seen one, except maybe in Austria.

I also sounded an old horn — an old theme of mine, namely America the Nonsensical and Inhospitable. I had some new gripes, but I quoted from an Impromptus of June 2007 — which had some travel notes:

Chicago, Ill.: I’m in the lobby of the Sears Tower, waiting for a friend. I have been standing for a while, and wish to sit down — but there are no chairs or benches, this being America, the most inhospitable place in the world (sometimes). So, I sit on my suitcase — which, by the way, has been run through a security machine. And a guard comes up to say, “You can’t sit down.” It doesn’t matter whether it’s on my own suitcase — I just can’t sit down. Presumably, I could stand all day — but I can’t sit down. This being America — or at least the Sears Tower.
Ladies and gentlemen, sometimes America is utterly nonsensical, and maddening. You know that I’m a dedicated anti-anti-American. But there are societies that, in a situation like mine, would find you a drink, maybe some cookies.

Okay, that was a long wind-up. Now I want to give you the letter — a short one. A reader writes,

I grew up on Mozart in Chicago. And I worked a summer in the Sears Tower as a janitor. Part of it on the public floors. I had the same problem. Nowhere to sit for eight hours a day. My solution was to go into an elevator, turn it off, close the doors, and pretend I was vacuuming it to rest my feet!