Teen Feel

Sir:

I was morosely slapping my baby fat, mourning my acne, and tearfully considering my martyrdom to high school while searching the pages of your fine magazine for a subject for my next current events report in world affairs class, when I happened to find an article in Music called "St. Joan of the Jukebox" [March 15]. It looked interesting, so I read it. Being 16, I find that I am pretty well "over the hill" from the point of view of your article; nevertheless, it touched a few soft spots in my memory. I speak from years of experience, you might say.

You have, and in your own inimitable style, presented a very good picture of the pop record field and what you call the "teen feel . ."

I am considering the article for my current events report, except that I don't think it would go over very well with my teacher, and therefore would only add to the pain of my high school martyrdom.

KATHRYN HARMON

Pomona, Calif.

TIME is my favorite magazine, but Dion is my favorite singer. You must admit that the songs we teen-agers listen to are better than the songs you old fogies listened to when you were kids (if you ever were).

STEVE YOUNGS

Hastings, Mich.

Sir:

What's wrong with Dion? He is anything but pathetic looking, and saying that he has a little voice is like saying President Kennedy is bald. Dion has everything a rock-'n'-roll singer needs, especially hair.

CAROL REISS

Brooklyn

Sir:

Your article has reason, directness and logic, but it is written with adult uncomprehension. Being 17, I suppose I am above what you consider the "teen feel," yet I cannot help sensing that you have missed the point entirely.

Everything you said is true: we do try to drown our sorrows, or whatever you may call them, by listening to simple sounds on the radio, and yet there are two sides to every story. Presumably, being an adult, you looked in from the outside and could not see for the reflection. Today I think we all feel the push, rush and tension in our lives. Young people feel this drive as much as adults, if not more, because of their youth. We seek to relieve this tension of "broken dates, homework, high school," not as adults, but with something as simple, as idiotic, as repetitive and as "dumb" as popular "dirges."

CHARLOTTE R. DENNETT

Riverside, Conn.

Sir:

It is my belief that teen-agers claim these weird conglomerations of noise and moaning for their own only until they can find their own places in society--or out of it. I went through it all (I'm 16), and now sometimes I turn on the radio and it just makes me sick.

Teen-agers aren't being sophisticated: they're being asinine about the whole music industry--especially folk music. Rock 'n' roll is too superficial to be of any lasting value, while the folk songs they insult will live on.

S. WHEAT Bavside, Va.

Peeping Sam

Sir:

The "Peeping Tom" relationship between the U.S. and the planet Venus [March 8] began a good many years ago, if this cartoon from an 1858 issue of Yankee Notions can be relied on. The caption reads: "What may be Expected. After annexing all the territory this side of Jordan, Jonathan [an early name for Uncle Sam] casts a longing eye upon the other, with a view to 'absorption' of some of the other planets. Venus will be the first one taken in, probably."

ROGER BUTTERFIELD

New York City

The Valet's Ordeal Sir:

Regarding "The Valet's View" [March 22], I can only say this--Caesar had his Brutus, Christ had his Judas, and Eisenhower had his Emmet John Hughes.

EDWARD DE H. STICK Carlisle, Pa.

Sir:

It seems that all you have to do these days to get a book published is write down all the nasty things you've ever thought about a revered public figure.

What do you suppose Emmet John Hughes does when he isn't writing books? Taps his friends' and neighbors' telephones, I'll bet.

MARTHA KRAFT

Indianapolis

Sir:

Perhaps Emmet Hughes should join Princess Margaret's former footman. David John Payne. They could dig dirt together.

MRS. THOMAS CHIKALLA Madison, Wis.

Time Piece

Sir:

I liked TIME'S timely piece on U.S. Time's great timepiece [March 15].

JOHN BEDNER JR. (A stockholder of U.S. Time) Arlington, Va.

The Waiting Game

Sir:

On behalf of all the have-been-nauseatcd, burped-and-wet-upon, bleary-eyed, straggly-haired mothers, many thanks for your article on maternity fashion ads [March 15]. Reading it helped me to lose the guilt complex built up by not being able to match those lovely, serene creatures in the ads. I hereby challenge all advertisers to use models 8 1/2 months pregnant.

BARBARA FRICKE Claremont, Calif.

Sir:

Nine months ago I was 23, weighed 105 lbs., stood 5 ft. tall, and worked as a high-priced secretary--efficient, chic and sophisticated. Now I am still 23, 5 ft. tall, weigh 128 lbs., and when I am not being sick all over, I am trying to keep house. I am disorganized, sloppy and cranky.

Oh, both my husband and I read these women's magazines where a "lady-in-waiting" is beautiful to everyone--she not only has some of the "sweetest-looking" clothes to choose from but has an inner glow that makes her radiant. I do have some of those "sweet-looking" maternity clothes but what good do they do me when they don't hang right or button shut (they fitted at six and seven months, but not now) and when my feet, ankles, hands, arms and face are swollen? As for an inner radiance, how can I? I know I look awful.

MRS. E. J. McCABE JR. Climax, N.Y.

Sir:

Obviously "The Waiting Game" was written by a woman with experience in such things. Such delightfully accurate pieces of reporting are the reason that I always pass up women's magazines in favor of TIME.

(MRS.) ELIZABETH VITEK Guildford, Australia

William Carlos Williams

Sir:

I read your wonderful report on William Carlos Williams [March 15], and my day was made. Your reporter's poignant finish was a masterpiece of poetry itself. After the quotation on death, which truly could have been Williams' own epitaph, there followed those two wallop-packed sentences: "Except for the poems. Except for the babies."

Such an affirmation would have had Dr. Williams himself cheering--as I am cheering.

ETTA CLUSTER MERCUR Baltimore

Chicago

Sir:

Your cover story [March 15] describes the feeling and sense of Chicago as I've tried to do since moving from there last year. It was real enough to taste.

FRANK H. STILES

Bridgeville, Pa.

Sir:

Having worked in the heart of Chicago's South Side for two summers and having seen its police bought and its people suffer, I agree with Willard Motley, who, in Let No Man Write My Epitaph, calls your "man among cities" "a lady with a painted face and dirty underwear."

JEFFRY BIES Minneapolis

Sir:

Your article on Chicago's Mayor Daley says that his power is "dedicated to making Chicago a better place." It is more dedicated to creating Democratic vote totals where none exist, and the city's elections are probably the most dishonest in the nation.

Presumably you know the story about John Kennedy, Dean Rusk, and Mayor Daley adrift in a lifeboat with food for only one person, so that two people have to jump overboard. Kennedy says he is too important ; Rusk says he is too important; but Daley says that the democratic way to decide on the martyrs is to have an election. So they vote. Daley wins the vote, 8 to 2.

WARREN SNYDER Evanston, Ill.

Sir:

The particular base from which I'm writing is a volunteer, nonpartisan civic activity seeking to update and thus improve the world's information about Chicago.

To state our objective, in oversimplified terms, it would be very nice if some day Chicagoans could travel the world without small children pointing fingers and making noises imitating machine guns.

My mission at the moment is to thank you. Many of the finer aspects of Chicago's total personality came to light as collateral material in your March 15 cover story. Thus you have moved us closer to our objective.

ALLEN H. CENTER Committee for Economic & Cultural Development Chicago

Solitary, Not Lonely

Sir:

Please assure your readers, many of whom have written to me, that I am not lonely. A solitary Lutheran monk, yes--but not lonely.

One Lutheran pastor has written that "many celibate clergy and laymen, myself being a case in point, live neither in solitude nor in loneliness, and have neither need nor desire to be an Anglican, Catholic or Lutheran monk." TIME did quote me correctly, I believe. However, I should have made it clear that I was thinking of the Lutheran celibate called to the religious life.

To correct a misunderstanding, it should be made clear that the Mass is celebrated here only when there is someone along with the celebrant to receive Holy Communion.

ARTHUR CARL KREINHEDER, C.S.C. St. Augustine's House Oxford, Mich.

The Computer & the Amanuenses

Sir:

The evidence obtained from an electronic computer by the Scottish Rev. Andrew Morton [March 15] as to the undoubted Pauline authorship of four New Testament Epistles confirms the findings of the higher critics of the 19th century. Basing their judgment not only on literary style but on various other clues as well, they picked the same four Epistles as the only genuine ones in the 14 attributed to the Apostle Paul.

Having known this for a good many years, may I now feel a little smug about it?

BESSIE B. CHENICEK Chicago

Sir:

Our canny Scot demonstrates only that one can prove anything by statistics.

Paul was no classical author, writing by hand or dictating and correcting his manuscripts like a Plato or Plutarch, but a busy missionary bishop employing the amanuenses that he could pick up in the cities where he wrote his Epistles. Some were first-class, using classical Greek, balancing every sentence with the copious use of kais. Others were third-rate and knew only the koine kais, which have as much meaning as our colloquial ands. So kais are the most unreliable "figures" to pour into a computer.

(THE REV.) WILLIAM TOEDTMAN

Oceanside, N.Y.

O, Jonny

Sir:

I never knoo whoo put the oo in shampoo until I read the article on page fifty-tew of yoor March 8 ishoo. I won't pass judgment on phonics as a tule for teaching Jonny to read, but I must doubt that it improves his spelling. There are simply tew many exceptions to the rool--even when 'tew os get together tew say "boo." For example:

Luk at the kangarew I drue.

To make him stand out in a groop

I colored him bloo.

But yoo'll have to luk in the buk to spell him

For I drue him by ear.

Now that yoo've seen the kangarew See if yoo can find the yew. I'll give yew a gud cloo--She's hiding behind the ewe. Yoors trooly,

ROOTH FERNWUD Fresno, Calif.

Sir:

I have read the letter from the lady who thinks I shouldn't have learned to read the way my mother taught me. I do know how to spell raccoon. We had one in camp when my family went to Maine. It came at night. JONNY WENKART (Aged 7) Cambridge, Mass.

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