What Libby Unthank Tower advocates for is crucial, not least in light of what's happened to the rock 'n' roll bar scene in Eugene that produced the likes of the Searchin' Soul Blues Band in the late '60s and the Robert Cray Band and Curtis Salgado in the 1970s and how, according to Martin Scorsese, "Cinema is gone" (Register-Guard, 12/27, C4), for just two immediate examples. But it's also important to make explicit what Unthank Tower implies. For "culture" is not only music, books and our heritage. It is those patterns of meaning any group or society uses to interpret and evaluate itself and its situation. It is the symbolic and learned aspects of society transmitted not biologically but via social interaction. Nor can culture be reduced to, or explained away by, economic and political factor, though of course those factors certainly do influence -- without determining -- culture for good and ill, as Unthank Tower and the plight of rock 'n' roll and cinema demonstrate vividly.