MET POSTSCRIPT

A regular reader from Texas writes: "My Dad retired from Chevron in 1990. At the time of his retirement, he was quite high on the Chevron management food chain. I asked him about your article regarding Chevron-Texaco's failure to fund the Met broadcasts next year. Dad observes as follows:

"1. Chevron-Texaco is not the same company he worked for. There have been a couple of turnovers in the upper management and, although some of the men running things worked under him at one time, it was not under circumstances that would enable him to judge their priorities regarding corporate support of the arts.

"2. The whole area of corporate sponsorships is non-core and very minor. It simply doesn't receive much attention from upper management. If you will take a look at Chevron-Texaco's 2002 Corporate Responsibility Report, you will get a feel for the scope of the community involvement projects funded by the company. Some of the stuff simply gets lost in the shuffle.

"3. Chevron was always sensitive about its image. There is no reason to believe that sensitivity vanished with the purchase of Texaco. Perhaps one could contact the Vice Chairman whose portfolio includes corporate sponsorships and persuade him or her to reinstate the funding. As you observed, the total amount is really quite small and its reinstatement would probably cost less than rounding errors in the annual report."