India & Illusions
Sir:
A million thanks to President Kennedy and to the American people as well for rushing to India's aid in her hour of peril.
Undoubtedly, you are our real friends, and we Indians are ashamed that not only has our Prime Minister equated you with the Russians, who have more or less washed their hands of us, but said in the Indian Parliament [Nov. 23]: "They [Americans and British] help us--they feel this involves many issues in which they themselves are intensely interested," implying that American and British generosity in arms is entirely self-serving.
We are truly ashamed that Mr. Nehru has had the bad grace to voice these sentiments, considering the mammoth help America is pouring into India so graciously and unstintingly, with ''no strings attached." We realize perfectly well that if America so wished, it could have, justifiably, torn our foolish foreign policy to shreds before granting aid.
(MRS.) MACCA M. CHOKSI Bombay, India
Sir:
India is indeed threatened by Communism from both within and without, and nobody is more aware of this than Jawaharlal Nehru. Yet in spite of these facts, or indeed very much because of them, India's safest course remains that of nonalignment. Critics in the West should ask themselves what possible positive contribution India could make as a declared ally at this time.
I myself believe that it is in the West's interests to keep India out of the mainstream of the cold war as much as possible. In this way India will have a much better chance to build a stable, economically sound democratic system; and she will also be considerably more effective as a moderating influence on other, less responsible Asian and African countries.
JOHN O. FIELD Madras, India
Man of the Year
Sir:
We, the citizens of the United States who bear most of the world's problems on our shoulders, and all of them in our hearts; not always graciously, nor always willingly, but always, and seemingly, endlessly.
DONALD B. LE MESSURIER Wharton School of Finance and Commerce University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia
Sir:
The Man of the Year must be the U.S. citizen. He put his country, family and life on the line in forcing the President to action.
DALE DONOVAN Lynchburg, Va.
Sir:
There is absolutely no doubt--General de Gaulle has won the title grandly.
PIERRE Ajoux Pebble Beach, Calif.
Sir:
We nominate Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt as the Woman of the Year. No other person had such an impact for good on the world during the past decade.
ROSWELL & LOIS JOHNSON Los Angeles
Sir:
I nominate the seven astronauts, for their bravery and courage in the beginning stage of the conquest of space.
ROBERT PINZLER East Meadow, N.Y.
Sir:
How about making up for your error in slighting the Man of the Past Several Decades by honoring Dr. Jonas Salk?
WARREN F. MILIUS St. Louis
Sir:
Castro.
WILLIAM C. SHANLY
Binghamton, N.Y.
Sir:
My nomination for Man of the Year: Ted Kennedy--well, I know, but he didn't have any qualifications for Senator either.
MARK WELLMAN, '65 Yale University New Haven, Conn.
Sir:
Right or wrong, like it or not, you will have to admit that Robert Welch in particular and the John Birch Society in general have had a greater impact on national thinking and individual political alertness than any other person or group in 1962.
GRIFFITH C. BARLOW, M.D. Glendale, Calif.
Sir:
Ross Barnett, Governor of the Sovereign State of Mississippi.
E. W. GARNER JR. Decatur, Ga.
Sir:
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. We citizens are indeed fortunate to have a man of his ability responsible for the safeguarding of our freedom, and yet he is one public servant who realizes that we shareholders are concerned about how our tax money is spent.
JOHN R. WISEMAN JR. West Somerville, Mass.
Sir:
Richard Nixon. He deserves it.
GEORGE OTT
Bayside, N.Y.
Cordelia
Sir:
Why do the faces on the First Lady mannequins in the Smithsonian "look like stylized versions of Cordelia, King Lear's daughter" [Nov. 23]?
LUCY CUMMINGS
Washington, D.C.
> In 1912, when the First Ladies Gallery was started, the Smithsonian decided to use one face on all the figures--in order to call attention to the dress and not the person. The Institution had in its collection a bust by a little-known 10th century sculptor, Pierce F.
Connelly, called Cordelia, that answered their requirements: a rather plain-looking face with vaguely classical features. Cordelia's facial proportions are adjusted to the relative size of each First Lady, whose hair style is also copied.--ED.
Echoes About Joan
Sir:
I wish Joan Baez [Nov. 23] agreed more with me, and I'm sure with many others of the "lost bunch" who have picked up the guitar, that picking up an instrument responds to the creativity in us. We sing and play an instrument because we want to express artistically our appreciation for, and our sensitivity to, the complexity of life, not because we feel that life is lost or that we have no future.
LINDSAY KNOWLTON Skidmore College Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
Sir:
Surely that is Chas Addams' Wednesday's Child on the cover, not Joan Baez.
JEREMY SCOTT WOOD New Haven, Conn.
Sir:
The painting is one of the most expressive uses of color and mood ever to appear on your cover.
(MRS.) LORRAINE SCHULTZ, '63
Barry College Miami
Sir:
Wasn't that Al Baez who used to sing in the Drew University Quartet when I was a senior (1937) at Madison (N.J.) High School?
Thank you for a simple, beautiful story about his daughter.
DOROTHY WATERS BAGBY Los Angeles
> Yes, Dr. Baez sang baritone.--ED.
Sir:
Now I know what is so hauntingly familiar about that gal Joan Baez. Her little-girl portrait in the background of the family group photo--I did it.
JANICE CAMPBELL CANDELA
Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.
Sir:
You left out one of our daughters: equally great in some eyes and very beautiful--the older sister of Joan, Pauline Marden.
JOAN (MOM) BAEZ Paris
> Pauline, no folk singer, is the wife of Brice Marden, a graduate student at Yale.--ED.
Sir:
For Miss Baez' information, one of the most famous folk singers America has produced, Roy Acuff, was the Republican candidate for Governor of Tennessee. He made a good showing in his "always Democratic" state.
LEE GALVANI
Hollywood
Sir:
Leadbelly died in 1949 and can't sue you for slander, but at least his friends can stand up for him. His "violent youth" was always overemphasized by sensation-mongers and presstitutes, and if he got in trouble, it was more the fault of the wide-open honky-tonks where he made his living. We who knew him the last 15 years of his life in New York can attest that he was the most considerate and generous human being, wonderful when singing for kids, and a helluva sight more honorable than the bored sophomores who loused up what could have been an interesting article on folk music.
PETER SEEGER Beacon, N.Y.
And Then the Revenest
Sir:
I believe that the original version of that poem, in the Religion article "What to Call the Preacher?" [Nov. 30], is from a novel about an Episcopal clergyman entitled The Chain. I recall its verses as follows:
Call me Mister if you will,
Call me Rector, better still.
Or perhaps the High Church frill,
Even Father brings no chill.
Mister, Rector, Father, Friend,
Names and titles without end.
But how that man my heart doth rend,
That blithely calls me Reverend.
(THE REV.) ROBERT E. FOSSE St. Matthew's Episcopal Church Evanston, Ill.
Sir:
Think of the uneasiness of Jewish laymen, who, alas, find themselves confronted by a whole horde of "reverends" who have assumed that title for themselves, regardless of its doubtful grammar. They have taken on this appellation to cover their positions as chicken killers, kosher slaughterers, synagogue beadles, ritual arrangers, providers of a minyan (made famous by Paddy Chayefsky's Tenth Man), circumcisers, cantors, choir singers, undertakers, burial arrangers, and frequently even grave diggers, not to speak of the ubiquitous shammash (originally "servant"), who is the real factotum in every well-run synagogue or temple. I wonder if they like to be called or to call themselves "reverends" because of its similarity in sound to the real appellation of the modern-day Jewish clergyman, and thus hope to be considered as rabbis without the benefit of ordination.
RABBI MAURICE J. BLOOM Tremont Temple The Bronx
Sir:
Relax and look up the word reverend in Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1961). You and your Protestant clergymen are hopelessly behind the times. The word reverend has graduated to the category of a noun, "rev'er-end--n-s: a member of the clergy: minister, priest, pastor . . . (saw the Reverend walking down the road)." Call me Reverend.
(THE REV.) WALTER G. TILLMANNS
Chairman
Department of Modern Languages Wartburg College Waverly, Iowa
Sir:
You have not heard all of it. Last summer I was addressed "revener." Now there may be some satisfaction in knowing that I have risen in rank above the minister who is merely "reven." But I wonder how much longer till I deserve to be acclaimed the "revenest"?
PASTOR Louis GOERTZ Mennonite Brethren Church Henderson, Neb.
Those Thin Walls
Sir:
Although small, there was a degree of comfort in seeing the new apartment dweller's plight so truthfully reported on your pages [Nov. 23].
I spent six sleep-shortened months listening to iron-tipped heels above me, a vociferous drunk next door, an elevator whose automatic door sometimes opened and closed itself at 30-second intervals all night. I learned to accept windows that had to be forced open and propped to stay open, kitchen cabinets that also had to be forced open (never to close again), lumpy kitchen linoleum, falling bathtub plaster and--ah, well, you told the rest of the story.
Muttering caveat emptor over and over to drown out my conscience, we heartlessly sublet our superdeluxe "Something East" and quietly left town.
JANE RUTH Miami
Sir:
I had my introduction to the problems and the advantages of living in the new luxury barracks when I discovered that my neighbor was reusing the razor blades that I disposed of through the slot in the back of my medicine cabinet onto the bottom shelf of his.
DEE L. ASHLIMAN
Salt Lake City
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