Letters: Apr. 12, 1963

The Hard Row

Sir:

Mr. Koerner’s covers are terrific! Few artists can convey that much sensitivity and personality with so few dabs of oil.

Your cover story [April 5] can be no more than just a caption to that wonderful portrait. The story is there, in Koerner’s cover.

J. D. KIMMINS Atlanta

Sir:

The Government should offer to sell each farmer as much grain as would normally be grown in one year, at a price slightly less than it would cost the farmer to grow it. The farmer would take a one-year vacation. The Government, instead of spending money, would get some of it back. Storage costs would be eliminated. The taxpayer would get some relief.

Are there any other problems that need solving, Mr. Freeman ?

CARL E. SCHULTZ

St. Joseph, Mich.

Sir:

Why can’t farmers operate under the law of supply and demand like other Americans?

SHARON SCHMIDT Madison, Wis.

Sir:

As I have seen many people die of starvation, and as I myself have felt the pangs of hunger on several occasions during the last World War, I pray the Lord that this great country, which is offering me hospitality, may forever be faced with the “dismal prospect” [of the biggest harvest in history! with which Mr. Freeman has to deal at present.

M. FEZ AS New York City

Sir:

The remark, “Farming has little appeal for young men nowadays,” made my blood boil. What’s wrong with farming? Where else can you be your own boss without punching a time clock? And why do people insist on cracking those corn-fed jokes about the “dumb” farmer and his wife?

Today’s farmer is no dummy. He has a high school or college education. He knows how to dress and entertain. He keeps up with modern methods. He’s dedicated to his job and proud of it.

And what’s more, I’d like to see you city people manage a fulltime operation all by yourself, all on your own capital, and try to make it a profitable enterprise.

CAROL KAY SUEDMEYER Okawville, Ill.

Paying the Tab

Sir:

Regarding the ransom paid to Castro for the Bay of Pigs fiasco, should not the label have been “In the Red” rather than “In the Black” [March 29]?

Some weeks ago, your magazine reported that the drug firms were donating drugs. Now you report that profits from the donations are being turned over to charity. Is it not true that the ransom is being paid by taxpayers? Why deceive the public by giving the impression that drug firms are generous, kind-hearted corporations? The simple fact is that we are paying the ransom, although most of us do not know it and some of us do not like it.

PAUL E. SPAYDE Lakewood, Ohio

Sir:

Hooray for Bobby ! Business in the black, U.S. Treasury in the red, and J.F.K. off the hook. Diverting Treasury funds is now constitutional.

DOUG SMITH

Sterling, Kans. Calling AC3PT

Sir:

Crown Prince Namgyal of Sikkim [March 29] is an amateur radio operator using the call letters AC3PT. To the thousands of us “hams” who have talked to him or have heard him on the air, reading about his wedding to Hope Cooke was indeed a thrill. SUE PIERCE

K55BN Cut Off, La.

Nasser’s World

Sir:

Your story on “The Middle East” [March 29! is a tribute to free and responsible journalism. The article is at least 90% fair, reasonable and objective. Congratulations!

MOHAMMAD T. MEHDI Arab States Delegations Office New York City

Sir:

Nasser, as you pointed out, spends money, manpower and thinking time on uniting the Arab world. Your article gives the feeling that this is a commendable thing. But isn’t Russia doing something similar in parts of Asia, and wouldn’t it dearly love to have a united world, toeing the party line?

TIM G. SYMONDS Los Angeles

Sir:

Your excellent cover story will contribute much to better understanding this much maligned, much misunderstood, truly rememberable man. During a lengthy interview in 1961, Nasser told me: “I could never become a Communist for two reasons: first, I believe in God. Second, my people could not trust me if I did.”

GRANT C. BUTLER* Pacific Palisades, Calif.

Sir:

I cherish Robert Vickrey’s covers. But I am sorry he put Nasser’s head where it obscured the Sphinx’s ear. The last time I saw that ear (Easter 1960), there was a bird’s nest on top of it.

W. ROBERT HOLMES Albany, N. Y.

Sir:

In which of the nations concerned did your fine March 29 cover story make the newsstands ?

HENRY W. HOLT Torrington, Conn.

> The ‘issue was banned in Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, but circulated in Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon.—ED.

Mother Seton’s Children

Sir:

What happened to Betty Seton’s five children ?

CAROL JONES West Covina, Calif.

> Two of the children died during their mother’s lifetime; both were buried at the cemetery of St. Joseph’s Provincial House, Emmitsburg, Md. Rebecca, the youngest, was only 14 when she succumbed to a hip injury. Anna Maria (Sister Annina) died as a novice of the order; she was not quite 17. Catherine Josephine survived her mother, became a Sister of Mercy, New York City, lived to the age of 91. One of the two sons, Richard, a bachelor, was a seaman and died at sea at age 25. He contracted a contagious disease from a minister aboard ship whom he volunteered to care for. William, who lived to 71, was the only one to marry, had seven children, four girls and three boys. His grandson Ferdinand Jevons, now 87, of Huntington, N.Y., is the only surviving direct descendant of Mrs. Seton.—ED.

In Cool Distaste

Sir:

This letter is not written in “hot haste”—it is written in cool, appalled distaste for the so-called Insider school [March 29].

Inside of what ?

This current sickness fad that portrays man as a misshapen, sluglike, soulless shape stripped of all dignity and humanism is an insult to those of us old-fashioned enough to believe that “man is created in God’s own image.” This studio-card art creates no pity, no sympathy, no understanding—just repugnance, despite all the loud posturing of its well-publicized practitioners.

By the shovelful, it can’t begin to equal a fraction of the tenderness, pity, humanism and dignity evoked from a single painting by a Wyeth, or a Hopper, or a Shahn, or a Broderson, and others of the Outsiders.

WILLIAM D. GORMAN Bayonne, N. J.

The Original Christys

Sir:

The Christy Minstrels [March 29] will be hard put to score any hits as lasting as some of those introduced by the original Christy

Minstrels, who were organized by Edwin P. Christy in 1842 and were the most famous minstrel show in the country for almost two decades.

Edwin P. Christy has been long forgotten by all but a few devotees of the early minstrels. Not so the name of one of his proteges, Stephen Collins Foster, some of whose best-loved ballads were popularized by Christy. If the New Christy Minstrels can develop a smash hit like Oh, Susannah or Old Folks at Home, both of which were first presented to the American public by E. P. Christy’s minstrel troupe, they will deserve to rank with their illustrious predecessors.

This 1847 title page indicates what the original Christy Minstrels looked like in blackface. The song to which this title page belongs was written by Christy himself, and is entitled Farewell, Ladies, which, as you might suspect, has now become Goodnight, Ladies and has been played countless times at the expiration of formal and informal dances.

LESTER S. LEVY Pikesville, Md.

> Randy Sparks, founder of the New Christy Minstrels and an avid folk music researcher, elected to name his group after the 19th century minstrels because “they were the first big group to sing in harmony and to break the ensemble down into individual acts.”—ED.

LSD & Life

Sir:

It is obvious from your article [March 29] on psychedelic drugs that your writers have never had the opportunity personally to experience the effects of psilocybin, mescaline or LSD. The major critics of drug research at Harvard are also all men who have never had an individual experience with the drugs.

In every describable way, naturally occurring profound experiences that have been reported to me (most common—intense love, esthetic entrancement, religious ecstasy) in open-ended questionnaires resemble psychedelic drug-induced experiences of the subjects of Drs. Leary and Alpert.

The overwhelming majority of the subjects who have taken LSD, mescaline or psilocybin through Drs. Leary and Alpert report that their lives have been changed for the better. I have taken these drugs a number of times myself. I feel a reverence for the experiences they have induced, just as I feel a reverence for my most cherished, naturally occurring profound experiences.

DAVID P. NOWLIS Harvard University Cambridge, Mass.

Sir:

The assumption of the learned Drs. Presnell and Leary that the mentioned drugs will always produce desirable or pleasurable results is probably in error. For a person with memories of horror, these drugs might cause terrible reactions.

LARRY E. MCGEMSLING

Los Angeles

Sir:

The dangers, grossly exaggerated, shrink to insignificance alongside the real and demonstrable perils of nicotine and alcohol consumption. The world would be vastly better off were, say, mescaline placed upon the market and alcohol removed from it.

R. E. L. MASTERS Director

The Julian Press Library of Sex Research New York City

Faith & Prejudice

Sir:

The largest unorganized minority group in the U.S. is the Protestants. Following Christ’s command to save our lives by losing them, we have championed the causes of peace, disarmament, economic justice, sobriety, desegregation, and tolerance. One cause we have failed to champion is Protestantism.

Thus, lacking a defensive posture, we are the happy hunting ground of the liberals. The Administration blames “the basic Puritan ethic of the American people” for impeding economic growth. Sociologists regularly castigate the “Protestant ethos” as the source of our social ills. Organized racial groups accuse Protestantism of being the fountainhead of prejudice and discrimination. Now comes Dr. Bernhard Olson [March 29] with his elaborate book on how the Protestant Sunday School is the breeding ground of anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism, despite the fact that both Judaism and Catholicism have flourished in Protestant America.

HARVEY N. CHINN Sacramento, Calif.

Bali How?

Sir:

On Monday I was flightseeing Gunung Agung and also Denpasar, learning firsthand about the volcano’s eruption.

Tuesday and Wednesday I was in Singapore reading still-garbled accounts in local newspapers of the extent of the damage. Thursday, Hong Kong’s dailies were just beginning to sort fact from fantasy.

At noon I bought a copy of TIME [March 29] at a Hong Kong newsstand and read the clearest, most accurate account of the disaster available in this part of the world.

You turned out a straighter story than did media only four jet hours from the disaster scene.

Don’t tell me how you really did it—I like to believe in legerdemain.

MARTIN B. PRAY U.S. Travel Service American Embassy Tokyo

* Author (Kings and Camels).