Letters: Sep. 29, 1967

Like Wow!

Sir: An excellent article on the Beatles [Sept. 22]. We knew that sooner or later the older generation would be forced to admit that the Beatles are brilliantly talented. What took you so long?

DANA WOLDOW Haverford, Pa.

Sir: With every album since Rubber Soul, the Beatles have been approaching an all-encompassing pop-music nirvana. Pray that they make it before old age and the Establishment catch up with them.

H. FRANKLIN JOHNSON JR. Blauvelt, N.Y.

Sir: You did the Beatles proud with your magnificent cover story on them, but you also did yourself proud by printing the article when you did. Most national magazines rushed out hastily written copy on them when the Beatles burst on the music scene, but you waited until they reached the zenith of their genius before doing a write-up. I am glad you did. GAIL LYNN LARSEN Lombard, 111.

Sir: While the Beatles were still in the heavy rock kick, Simon & Garfunkel were producing great intellect. When the Beatles can produce something like A Poem on The Underground Wall, or Sounds of Silence, they will be truly great.

JIM SLINGLUFF Hurlock, Md.

Sir: I am rapidly approaching the age when a person usually turns to more conservative music. But I still feel pop music! Shunned by my girl for keeping beat with the album, I seek reassurance that Sgt. Pepper is one of the greatest sounds ever recorded. Thanks for your finely written support.

MARLON T. WALSH Chicago

Sir: TIME is one of the few magazines that acknowledge the extraordinary talent that the Beatles have and now produce on records. Long after the Monkees and the Jefferson Airplane have faded away, the Beatles will still be strong.

BARBARA CLARKE Newport, R.I.

Washday Blues

Sir: So what if Governor Romney said he was brainwashed [Sept. 15]? The Governor has suffered fierce political attacks merely because his speech is not as fast-talking as F.D.R.’s, as glib as J.F.K.’s, or as homespun and hypnotizing as L.B.J.’s. Romney is a man with integrity and noble convictions. Isn’t it time the U.S. had a President who would give us the facts instead of a lot of old-fashioned rhetoric, a President who wouldn’t be trying to brainwash the American people?

SHELDON LEWIS Southfield, Mich.

Sir: The most damaging thought about Governor Romney’s Viet Nam flip-flop via the brainwashing cop-out is not that he could be so easily “brainwashed” but that he is just another wheeler-dealer seeking a popular opinion to stand on and lacking true conviction. He is a good actor, but there are better ones in the arena. What we need now is an honest man.

RONALD V. SINGER, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Psychology Marquette University Milwaukee

March On

Sir: We are chagrined with the implication that Father James Groppi’s militancy is responsible for riots and the present lack of an open-housing ordinance in Milwaukee [Sept. 15]. His militancy seems to be the most positive force for improvement of conditions for the city’s Negro population. You charge that he “leaped into the issue”; while your previous statement says that the issue had been proposed for debate in city council five times, and had five times been refused. Action following this could hardly be termed a headlong “leap.” Your solution is that either Father Groppi cool off or that the white community become sympathetic. That the latter would happen of itself is absurd; that the former would bring about the latter is equally absurd. Pressure, unfortunately, has been proven effective. “Cooling off” could at most bring a new string of promises to be broken.

DR. AND MRS. WM. HOFFMAN Louisville

Sir: Seeking major change in the spirit of Selma in 1967 is unusual in a city ripe for a Watts-like episode. It is a tribute to the moral integrity of Milwaukee’s Negro youth and their advisers that they are marching. Your comments reflect upon a man who has done more to promote peaceful change in Milwaukee than any other individual.

CHARLES O’REILLY Madison, Wis.

Whose Priorities?

Sir: You say that the $25 billion a year spent on Viet Nam could not “be simply redeployed from the prosecution of a war to the pacification of U.S. cities [Sept. 8].” In reality, it could be redeployed; that it probably would not be is a function of the democratic process, not the logistical impossibility of such a transfer. If the transfer were to take place, it would not be an “abdication of responsibility abroad,” but rather a long-awaited acceptance of responsibility at home, a responsibility that has heretofore been met with programs meant to pacify dissident elements rather than alleviate problems. Isolationism, of course, is untenable today, and few responsible critics would endorse such a policy, but a thorough reassessment of our responsibilities will show that most of them lie untouched in our urban ghettos.

A. DIDRICK CASTBERG Chicago

Sir: Useful criticism is necessary and helpful. But naive, ridiculous arguments as “Why should the U.S. engage in a war halfway around the world?” are irrational. Does anyone remember Pearl Harbor, Stalin’s abortive promises at Yalta, the Communization of Eastern Europe? Maybe Korea rings a bell.

CHARLES R. BURNS JR. Columbus, Ohio

Root of the Matter

Sir: The Essay about “The Science & Snares of Statistics” [Sept. 8] reminds me of an observation by Sir Josiah Stamp (1880-1941), himself a player of the game: “The government are very keen on amassing statistics. They collect them, raise them to the nth power, take the cube root and prepare wonderful diagrams. But you must never forget that every one of these figures comes in the first instance from the village watchman, who just puts down what he damn pleases.”

THOMAS M. MULVEY Providence

The Free & the Fettered

Sir: Your Essay on Singles [Sept. 15] was an accurate portrayal. I should know. I run a singles club. Many months ago, when I started this club, I felt that the single life was exciting and that my members were really getting a full measure of life out of it. I am a little older now—and a lot wiser. The single looks for lasting friendships or relationships—but these do not seem to materialize. There is no one who really cares, who is really concerned about him. This kind of realization, I have found, is almost unendurable for some, very depressing for others. I used to think that the family system was passe, but the singles in my club who seem to survive well the emptiness and void are the ones who have strong, close family ties.

The rest are constantly casting about. They are very bored, very depressed. No, the single life is not all that exciting or fun or fulfilling. If it were, the singles would not be joining my club—and hundreds of clubs like mine—in an almost desperate attempt to get out of the single life.

NONA M. AGUILAR Los Angeles

Sir: As a “swingle” seriously working on becoming a person, I thank you for your analysis. Now that I am aware of all those lives of “quiet desperation,” I don’t feel nearly so alone.

CAROLE E. COLEMAN San Francisco

Sir: A very perceptive Essay. My only comment is that you fail to mention the inhibiting fear that besets many of the singles who “devoutly wish that they weren’t.” The fear that we will join the apparently numerous ranks of marrieds who wish, equally devoutly, that they hadn’t. ROGER DAVISSON Stanford, Calif.

Sir: Being single is like banging your head against a wall: it feels so good when you stop. At 27, I married a widower with four children; at 40, I am the engrossed mother of ten. Conclusion: careers are fulfilling, marriage is absorbing.

PAT SOMERS CRONIN Chicago

Sir: Your Essay has left me a broken man. I am a 45-year-old bachelor. I write books for a living, reside in a cozy cabin near a rural trout stream, have a wonderful platonic relationship with a divorcee who lives down the road, and enjoy occasional outside dates. For years, I have believed that I was enjoying a state of contentment that is rare on this earth—and that I was presenting an enviable public image. Now, with lightning suddenness, I learn that I am nothing but a psychopath and an object of public pity. Melancholy has gripped me.

RICHARD WHEELER Pine Grove, Pa.

Time to Ask the Women

Sir: Progress in the management of obstetrical complications has eliminated any scientific justification for therapeutic abortion [Sept. 15]. Physicians worthy of the name dedicate their lives to saving human life and should refuse to destroy unborn babies for social or economic reasons.

ROY J. HEFFERNAN, M.D. Brookline, Mass.

Sir: Everyone hears points of view from theologians, physicians, and sociologists—why not ask the unwed mother or the wife forced to bear and raise an unwanted child? Of course the “disease of an unwanted pregnancy is usually not fatal,” but the side and aftereffects are heartbreaking. It’s ridiculous for men to make rulings on abortions—they don’t know what it is to carry or bear a child. They’ve been sowing their seed for years, and women will always have to do the reaping unless birth control is available to anyone who desires it.

ALISON S. WARD Frederick, Md.

Long in the Tongue

Sir: I believe a clarification is in order on my views regarding the Ch’u Silk Manuscript [Sept. 1]. It is the long-tongued wooden figures of Ch’u culture (not the drawings in the manuscript) that provide the best Chinese evidence of a motif that is widespread in the Pacific area (Borneo, Sumatra, New Guinea, New Zealand, British Columbia, Mesoamerica). Long-tongued images do occur in the art of certain South American cultures, including that of the probably Chinese-influenced Chavin civilization, but none of these South American art forms show any special relationships with Ch’u culture, still less with the figures in the Ch’u manuscript. As regards cultural evolution, my point was that since the Chinese and above-mentioned Pacific Basin societies developed along radically divergent lines, the striking similarities that appear in their art styles are more likely to be due to contact than to convergent evolution.

DOUGLAS FRASER Department of Art History and Archaeology Columbia University

First Four

Sir: Your article “Delayed Christening” [Sept. 8], concerning features on the moon’s far side, seems to imply a difference of opinion between scientists of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. at recent meetings of the International Astronomical Union in Prague. It is true that the U.S.S.R. arrived with a list of possible names. So did the U.S.A. But neither list was formally presented. After consideration of the basic problem of rules and procedures, as president of the Lunar Commission, I proposed deferment of formal naming until the next meeting of the IATJ, three years hence; Dr. A. Mikhailov, director of Pul-kovo Observatory in Leningrad, seconded the proposal, which passed unanimously. The new commission president, Dr. A. Dollfus of France, appointed a new working group on lunar nomenclature, consisting of Dr. Mikhailov, Dr. M. Minnaert, distinguished Dutch astrophysicist, and myself as chairman. At an early date I shall propose naming features for the four astronauts, three American and one Russian, who lost their lives in accidents connected with space research.

DONALD H. MENZEL Harvard College Observatory Cambridge, Mass.

Straight Down the Pike

Sir: If this be heresy? Heresy, indeed! When I think of the Right Rev. James A. Pike [Sept. 15], I am reminded of what my professor of theology used to tell us before our exams. “Don’t be afraid of committing heresy ’cause none of you birds is smart enough to be a heretic.” Alongside the great, classical heretics against whom the first four ecumenical church councils were convened, Bishop Pike’s warmed-over 19th century rationalism compares to that pop artist’s oversized Brillo boxes stacked next to Goya’s Disasters of War, or Picasso’s Guernica, or Griinewald’s Isenheim altarpiece. Pop theology, si, heresy, no, because the Rt. Rev. Mr. Pike is simply not intelligent enough.

THE REV. (FR.) DAVID CLEMONS

Vicar

St. Andrew’s Episcopal Mission Broken Arrow, Okla.