A WOMAN telephoned last week to ask whether it would be possible to obtain TIME a little earlier than it is usually available on the newsstands in New York. Her reason unfolded one of the seemingly small--but particularly human--stories of how TIME is used after it gets into the hands of the reader.

A secretary from the Women's Auxiliary of Congregation Emanu-El picks up copies of the magazine each week at the ground-floor newsstand of the Time & Life Building in midtown Manhattan. The copies are rushed to the temple's offices on upper Fifth Avenue, where women volunteers begin the task of transcribing TIME'S text into sound. Starting with this page, the women record the entire contents, including descriptions of charts, onto disks--a task involving eight hours of reading the magazine's nearly 60,000 editorial words.

The recorded TIME, on 16 seven-inch records, is then sent by special delivery to the Rev. Father Harry J. Sutcliffe, 42, an Aramaic scholar who is director of the Episcopal Guild for the Blind in Brooklyn. Father Sutcliffe, blind from birth, frequently travels and lectures on interfaith relations and current affairs. Once when he mentioned to a friend that TIME would be a tremendous asset to him, the friend introduced him to Mrs. Joseph Brand, who set the volunteer program in motion. Starting this week, one of our messengers will hurry the magazine to the women as soon as it arrives from the printing plant. -

A minute gesture or item, such as the pencil reproduced in actual size on this page, can sometimes acquire great value. That is just what happened when a voluntary organization asked G.I.s in Viet Nam what their most-wanted items were. Those needs were modest--such things as a pair of dry socks and some writing material. TIME provided the tiny pencil, which the Christian Reform Laymen's League included in 200,000 packets to Viet Nam. Surprisingly, the minipencil is serving purposes far beyond postcard writing. Its wooden shaft, wrote one Marine, is being used to clean the hard-to-get-at rifle sights, while the graphite helps sliding parts of the M16. Hearing of this, the volunteer group asked TIME for more of them to be included in a second shipment. This week another 200,000 pencils are going to the men.

Last December, we discussed in this space the expectations of CHOICE 68, a nationwide college presidential primary. On Wednesday of this week, students at 1,458 campuses across the nation vote their views on presidential choice and national issues. This will be the first national student vote in the U.S., and its results will surely be studied with interest in an election year when youth's activity has merited deserved attention.

Sperry Rand's Univac Division has joined TIME in supporting the primary, and will process ballots at its centers in Silver Spring, Md., Chicago and Los Angeles, with the vote to be analyzed finally on Univac's computers in Washington, D.C. Information from the expected 2,000,000 computer-card ballots will be stored as 144 million bits of data for the most thorough analysis of voting preferences in U.S. history. Votes will be broken down not only by age, kind of school and region, but by correlation of presidential choice to such issues as the urban crisis and the war in Viet Nam. Results will be announced in Washington next week.

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