Don't Knock Brooklyn

Sir: Your Brooklyn story [March 11] nauseated me. Brooklyn isn't Sheepshead Bay, Fort Hamilton, Flatbush, Bensonhurst, Canarsie and Coney Island. They're foreign. Brooklyn is Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Fort Greene, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Red Hook--places like that, where you can't get foot-long hot dogs or Marianne Moore, but where you can hear Latin-American music blasting all night, where Al Capone is a martyr, where you can buy licorice for a penny, where you can get the best malted milks in the world. "Only 1% of the kids are still dese, dem and dose types," says Professor Barrow. Not true. As long as there's a Brooklyn, there'll be a great, great many "dese, dem and dose" types. "Kids," he calls us. Well these "kids" are the happiest in the world. Don't doubt us for a minute. I live in Williamsburg, in an area called "greatly depressed." So my Brooklyn is labeled a rotten slum. I'll spend the rest of my life here--out of choice. Brooklyn is the best damn place in the world. Next time you guys knock Brooklyn, I'll come up there and make you eat your words.

SUSAN SCHOR, AGE 19

Brooklyn

Freedom, or Anarchy?

Sir: About sexual liberty at the University of California [March 11]: self-expression and an interchange of ideas are healthy in a learning experience, but not at the expense of social order. While the administration has been on the defensive, an element of the student body has corrupted the very goals education strives for. A clean-up is needed, backed by a firm (possibly new) administration.

D. PAUL COHEN '59

San Francisco

Sir: I was shocked at such outspoken moral lassitude. Yet I feel only pity for those who engage in this pursuit of "freedom," not realizing that they are undermining the basis of civilization: the family. What these "freedom fighters" advocate (whether or not they realize it) is moral anarchy, which leads to social anarchy and barbarianism.

LINDA C. COLANGELO

Yonkers, N.Y.

Sir: We read your story with interest and a touch of envy. With an enrollment of only about 5,000, instead of 50,000, and lacking the stimulating influence of an off-campus all-purpose rebel fringe community of another 10,000, Vanderbilt cannot match the flesh-colored originality of Berkeley's sensual free-for-alls.

DUDLEY CLENDINEN

TOM GRAVES

A. B. RITTENBERRY

Vanderbilt University

Nashville, Tenn.

Sir: I presume you don't claim originality for those guys and dolls, who do not even have a word for it. The Greeks had a word--orgy. So did the Romans--bacchanalia. Even the underdeveloped Brazilians have a cute word--suruba. In the '30s, I took part in similar divertissements with graduate students of Buenos Aires University; de rigueur attire for the young ladies was a lettuce leaf kept in place with a glob of whipped cream.

HECTOR G. SOSA

Chevy Chase, Md.

Sailor, Rest Your Oar!

Sir: Your quietly eloquent eulogy for Fleet Admiral Nimitz [March 4] bespeaks the man. Millions of Americans, even several hundred thousand of us who served in the Pacific Fleet, never set eyes upon him; rather, we felt and knew his presence. That was the genesis of our confidence. Sailor, rest your oar!

DR. ALLISON W. SAVILLE

Fulton, Md.

Sir: TIME perpetuates a colossal misstatement: that a reading of the Japanese "Purple Code" by the Army helped the Fleet Admiral dispose his forces for the Battle of Midway. The Purple Code was a Japanese diplomatic cipher; whether we read it or not had no relation to Midway. What did occur was that in April or early May 1942 a group of naval (including Marine) cryptanalysts and Japanese linguists working under Commander J. J. Rochefort at Pearl Harbor were successful in partially breaking and translating a Japanese naval code. This was a major element (but by no means the only one) affecting the successful disposition of Nimitz' forces for the Battle of Midway.

A. H. McCOLLUM

Rear Admiral, U.S.N. (Ret.)

Arlington, Va.

Sir: I am probably the only living witness to what happened when Nimitz ran the destroyer Decatur aground in 1908. The ship was conducting torpedo practice; I was torpedo officer; Nimitz, commanding officer, was on the bridge. We fired at a target moored in shallow water near the beach, which made recovering torpedoes easier. Then the ship headed toward a dinghy stationed to secure the spent torpedo. We proceeded cautiously, taking soundings. Since the bottom was known to be soft, there could be little damage to the ship if she did touch; Nimitz might have considered he was taking a calculated risk. When the ship did touch, we felt no jolt; she just stopped. Engines were reversed. All hands were ordered aft to lift the bow; the ship floated free. Nimitz conscientiously reported the incident.

HUGH ALLEN

Commander, U.S.N. (Ret.)

Pasadena, Calif.

Humor

Sir: About your Essay on humor [March 4]: You were right to include among the alltime big ones Jack Benny's reply to the robber who demanded his money or life. When I mentioned this old radio classic to Benny recently, he said: "That was our longest laugh. But the one I like best was on our TV show. My trousers were draped on a rack, and when a delivery boy came in, Rochester got a quarter out of my pocket and tipped the boy. Then I came in, hefted my trousers once, and said, 'Rochester, who took a quarter out of my pants?' Now THAT'S damn funny, if I do say so myself!"

ELSTON BROOKS

Amusements Editor

Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Fort Worth

Sir: About your Polish joke: May I tell you another?

Q: What's black and blue and lies on the floor?

A: Guys who tell Polish jokes.

GEORGE H. WOJTKIEWICZ

Waltham, Mass.

Urban Discontent

Sir: HUD may be able to breathe some new life into the cities [March 4], especially in business and commercial sectors, but Robert Weaver and his successors will eventually have to face the fact that the city as a residential area is dead.

NELSON ROSENBAUM

Princeton, NJ.

Sir: Philadelphia is proud of the changes in its urban renewal areas. But your incorrectly captioned photo pictures the contrast in Society Hill between the new luxury apartments and restored Head House, a fire house, community center and market place, dating back to 1805.

JULIE M. PONTZ

Municipal Guide

Philadelphia

Sir: How can Weaver be mostly Caucasian racially, indistinguishable from Caucasians culturally, and still be a Negro?

BOYE DE MENTE

Phoenix, Ariz.

Sir: TIME says Robert Weaver was refused a room in a freshman dormitory at Harvard because he was a Negro. This must be untrue. Negroes were allowed in freshman dormitories in my time (1921); they are now. Is there any reason for supposing that in 1926 they were not?

NORMAN HATCH

Norwich, Vt.

> Weaver cites a case besides his own in maintaining that Negroes were not given rooms in freshman dormitories, but were housed with upper classmen.

Tub or Tower?

Sir: Architect Philip Johnson's design for the Ellis Island shrine [March 4] is based on Brueghel's "Tower of Babel"--but Brueghel was a better artist. Brueghel's "Tower" has a wild and slightly drunken elegance; Johnson's looks more like an inverted wooden laundry tub.

RICHARD F. ROSTRON

Somerville, NJ.

Filling the Budgetary Hole

Sir: I have sent a check to Bus Driver Randazzo [March 4] to help compensate him for loss of pay while fulfilling his sense of civic duty. Perhaps this will be the beginning of a fund; a certificate of merit is a fine gesture, but it will not help fill the hole in his budget.

(MRS.) SUE T. ROUSE

Columbia, S.C.

Aggravated Agrypnia

Sir: Since your report on $3-an-hour floor sweepers [March 4] has exacerbated my agrypnia, cephalalgia and pyrexia to a point in extremis; you owe me, an R.N. at $2.82 an hour, a hint on where to apply.

(MRS.) RONALD G. HEGGELAND

Thousand Oaks, Calif.

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