DearTIME-Reader:

IN Paris last week, shivering TIME correspondents could readily sympathize with the plight of the French in their frantic search for gasoline, fuel and warmth (see "Wave of Fear" in FOREIGN NEWS). Cabled Correspondent Thomas Dozier: "Outside the office in the Place de la Concorde, ice glistens in the gutters. Inside, the radiators are stone cold, and members of the staff are bundled to the ears in heavy sweaters and wool scarves, as they rub their hands together to keep typing fingers agile. Those who have finished work are queueing for buses and subways; nobody has enough gasoline to drive to and from work. And for most of us, arrival at home means no cozy warmth around the dinner table. The fuel shortage has hit us hard."

JIM MURRAY of our Los Angeles bureau had a few chill moments of his own before he asked Shotputter Parry O'Brien to hold still long enough for this week's cover portrait, by New Mexican Artist Peter Hurd. It was the final week of intensive training before O'Brien took off for Australia and the Olympics, and Jim knew that the big shotputter could get mad as a wet bear when anything interfered with his training. What he did not know was that O'Brien also liked to dabble with paint. "He couldn't spare the time, but he also couldn't resist the opportunity to see a famous artist work close up," said Murray. Posing for Artist Hurd in a Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow, O'Brien excused himself one afternoon and went out to the Los Angeles Coliseum long enough to smash his own world's record by putting the shot 63 feet 2 inches.

ON another bone-chilling day at Camp Kilmer, N.J., a few atrociously accented words of Hungarian and an old school connection brought feelings of warmth and welcome to the shivering, confused and fearful refugees from Hungary. Researchers Eleanor Johnson and Deirdre Mead Ryan, who covered the arrival of the refugees at Camp Kilmer (see "The Huddled Masses" in NATIONAL AFFAIRS), found them still too bewildered to talk readily. On the way to the camp from the New Brunswick railroad station, Researcher Johnson learned that her taxi driver was a native Hungarian. He taught her a few Hungarian words and phrases, and as soon as she tried them out on the refugees their reticence broke down immediately.

DEIRDRE RYAN won the refugees' confidence even more quickly by producing her International Passport of the Society of the Sacred Heart --an identification card issued by this world-circling order of nuns to traveling former students. Finding a young woman who had been a student at the Sacred Heart Convent in Budapest, Deirdre showed her card from the Sacred Heart Convent in Washington, D.C. After that, the Hungarians were convinced they were among friends.

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