Why bother with art? In the wake of the earthquake in Haiti, and when millions have no food and water, Scott Christian wonders on Salon.com: Who gives a shit about Picasso? What's the point of poetry?

My mother has lung cancer even though she never smoked. A visual artist, she wonders if she's ill from years of inhaling poisonous paint fumes and fixants.

My daughter clicks to private design school websites. They cost $21,000 a year, $28,000 a year, $42,000 a year.

Is art a privilege?

Is it a necessity, like food and water?

Is it poison?

I wrote a book on happiness, but now that it's out there's a recession on and the journalists call for their interviews and complain: Americans can't afford happiness anymore.

But I was poor for long enough to know that happiness is one of the free things--like love, like creativity.

In the rubble, a woman is singing.