Cry the City

Sir: Thank you for an intelligent, fair and incisive story on Newark [July 21].

The problems of my city are many and complex, but the city administration under Mayor Addonizio has made a real effort to correct them and to improve the living conditions of all the people of Newark. As a fire officer who was in the streets during the riot, I believe I can speak for the great majority of men in the Fire Department. We are all most anxious to put the past to rest and to begin to rebuild, both spiritually and physically, our fine city.

EDWARD M. WALL Battalion Chief Fire Department Newark

Sir: Your biased story makes the poor white store owners who overcharge and gyp ghetto residents, the police, Mayor Addonizio and Governor Hughes appear pious and perfect examples of the "good guys" who cannot understand why this "terrible act of criminal insurrection" has taken place. The Negroes served as perfect examples of the "bad guys" who don't know how to behave and should contentedly nibble on the crumbs provided by the "highly successful" poverty program and other community-action programs--many of which have not even been started. No one group is all good or all bad. My suggestion to Americans appalled by the riots: become a little more appalled with the conditions, physical and emotional, that the ghetto dweller lives under and work consistently to erase and prevent the conditions that make for ghettos and the riots that grow out of them.

CHERYL I. FOSTER Newark

Sir: You can blame riots on anything you want to, you and the rest of the good citizens. There is one reason for them, and you know what it is: the black man is tired of being pushed around, and he has decided to push back hard. This isn't news to anyone, though everyone refused to admit it, but what we are doing in these riots isn't any worse than what the white man has done to us and is still doing to us. The white man just does it in a different way.

E. SLOANE Brooklyn

Sir: It is time for decent Americans of dark skin to disavow black racists, black assassins and black criminals, just as decent Americans of light skin have disavowed white racists, white assassins and white criminals.

Anyone, including my fellow liberals, who now attempts to justify riots, sniping, looting and other viciously criminal acts must henceforth bear a part of the responsibility for such mindless, sickening and self-defeating violence.

Meanwhile, let's have a moratorium on all publicity about the actions and pronouncements of officials of the "NonStudents Violent Committee" and other racist demagogues and terrorists.

P. W. FERRIS Murfreesboro, Tenn.

Come Seven ...

Sir: About your Essay on gambling [July 21]: There's two types of gamblers: a yokel compulsive gambler that thinks he can beat the house gambling devices layouts. Then, you have a professional gambler that makes a living from gambling in a systematic way. A pro gambler before he lays his money down, he studies the percentage against his chances of winning, especially at the crap table.

For instance, take a pair of dice, there's six numbers on each dice: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Take the two dice and place number 2 from one cube and number 5 from the other face to face, you'll have showing sevens all around the dice. In other words, there's six ways to make 7 with two dice --but the average player never cares to know the difference. On a pair of dice there's six ways to make 7 in one roll, five ways to make 6, five ways to make 8, four ways to make 5, four ways to make 9, and two ways to make 4, two ways to make 10.

A yokel dice gambler, not knowing the difference in the percentage he's bucking, will bet even money on any of the above said numbers--and that is why Reno and Las Vegas send a cab for them. While on the other hand, a pro gambler will ask for the right odds according to the number he chooses to play. A pro gambler will never play the field numbers on the crap table layout: 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11, 12. Out of the field are the following numbers: 6, 8, 5, 7, this is for the house. Just think, only four numbers for the house--and seven for the players. The four numbers for the house has 20 ways to show up, while the seven numbers for the players only 16, how you going to beat it? And that goes for every table in the house.

JOSEPH PIANTANIDA

San Francisco

Goldwyn Rule

Sir: The court's ruling in the Marsha Goldwyn case [July 14] is another horrible example of traditional and vital public order being sacrificed for newly discovered individual "rights." Society must protect itself from cheaters of all types and ages; school officials have the duty to expose them in their arena. By forcing a somewhat overzealous principal to defend his conduct before a lay political board, the Goldwyn rule has further weakened the teacher-student relationship as well as glorified the increasingly common philosophy of "anything goes as long as you don't get caught, and if you do, scream 'due process' "! If the courts keep limiting the discretion of key public officials, the latter will give up in disgust, and the nation will degenerate into all individual rights but no public and/or private duties.

SANFORD KILLIP Attorney Oakland, Calif.

Sir: Students, be wise: don't waste time studying to pass your exams the honest way. Live! Enjoy! Cheat whenever or wherever you can. The law is on your side. If you're caught with the goods, so much the better. You'll be sure to have your proud, smiling picture published in TIME.

LOUISE LARSON Wyckoff, N.J.

Something to Ponder

Sir: The Thoreau Society of America, cooler than the hippies, is taking the Thoreau stamp brouhaha [July 21] in stride. Recently, representatives of the society visited Sleepy Hollow Cemetery at Concord, where the Walden Ponderer is buried. No sign of protest was discovered at his grave.

A consensus of the society favors the face of any great American--but especially this Concorder--to complement the famous shot "heard round the world."

REGINALD L. COOK President of the Thoreau Society

Dana Professor of American Literature Middlebury College Middlebury, Vt.

Sir: I personally wouldn't give a damn if the Post Office put out a stamp with a picture of Mary Poppins on it. I do think, however, that the Postmaster General might get a chuckle out of this quotation from Walden:

"For my part, I could easily do without the Post Office. I think that there are very few important communications made through it. To speak critically, I never received more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage."

ELLEN KATE BILGORE Manhattan

Good Grief!

Sir: I would like to introduce a punctuation mark [July 21] called the "Charlie Brown." This is to be used after an exclamation of poignant despair, such as "I can't get anybody to believe in me." "My kite won't fly," or, simply "Rats." While composed of the selfsame elements now used in the normal exclamation point, it inverts the upper element to make maximal visual effect on a reader of its resultant teardrop shape:!

But I'll bet nobody ever wants to use my new symbol!

JACK SHARKEY Northbrook, Ill.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.