The Beautiful Gate

Sir / Many cover story topics this past year have been depressing, transitory or unappealing. But with the story on American wine [Nov. 27], you struck oenological gold.

To me wine was always just wine, but the story was like a beautiful gate opening into a lovely vineyard.

JOHN J. PASSANISI

Hyde Park, Mass.

Sir / Your headline about "American Wine..." is most misleading. It turned out to be a grand plug for California wine, not the wines of America, or even the U.S. In your rapture about the California product you make only a passing reference to the wines of New York. Also, why the omission of Ohio?

J.K. LIPPERT

Norwalk, Conn.

Sir / My compliments on TIME's story on wine in the U.S.; it is beneficial to the entire industry--with the exception of Guild, America's third-largest vintner. You overlooked the only major winery owned and operated by its grower members--over 800 of them, with more grape acreage under their control than any other single producer. You also overlooked the fact that our Winemaster's Pinot Noir won the coveted Grand Prize for the most outstanding wine at the 1971 Los Angeles County Fair.

ROBERT M. IVIE

President

Guild Wineries and Distilleries

San Francisco

Sir / It was an impressive story, all right, and the wine people out here ought to be happy about it. But how and why did you omit the name of the one Californian who knows more about wine than anybody else in the world, who was and is responsible for the high quality of wine in America, and to whom people come to study from all other continents? I am speaking of course of Maynard Amerine of the University of California at Davis.

One does not mind that a couple of the best vineyards were overlooked, but one wonders how Amerine, of all people, could possibly be omitted.

BURGESS MEREDITH

Malibu, Calif.

Shenanigans in the Navy

Sir / Apropos the shenanigans aboard the U.S.S. Constellation [Nov. 27], no matter how overlooked by blinded authority, beset by an inferiority complex or what have you, the actions of the men constituted mutiny--keelhaul the lot!

DODA DOUGLAS Laguna Hills, Calif.

Sir / Admiral Zumwalt says this is not a permissive Navy. He also publicly puts the blast on other senior admirals for not being nice enough to the malcontents. That rattling noise you just heard was John Paul Jones turning over in his crypt at the Naval Academy.

D.V. GALLERY

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

Oakton, Va.

Sir / Are we to make another General Billy Mitchell of Admiral Zumwalt? The admirals who oppose him are the same as the ones who wept when Mitchell's planes dropped dummy bombs on their battle wagons, the same as the ones who lined up the battle wagons at Pearl Harbor to scare the Japanese. They have always been guided by rigid stupidity. I don't believe the conflict is basically racial. It was the same in World War II with no blacks. If officers treat men justly and fairly, the men will respect them and carry out orders.

MERLE MARTIN

Wooster, Ohio

Sir / Constructive progress is not without its rocks and shoals. But led by one of our country's greatest men, Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, the Navy will become a professional, people-oriented, proud, self-motivated and self-disciplined outfit in which equal opportunity is accepted as a matter of principle and human values rather than as another program dictated by statute.

JOHN A. SCOTT Rear Admiral, U.S.N.

Dayton

Irate Indians

Sir / Your story on the Indians seizing the Bureau of Indian Affairs [Nov. 27] raises some questions for us. We are among the majority of Indians who hold jobs and try to earn a living like other productive members of this great American society. How come we never make the headlines? How come we are not "pacified" with "expense money"? Someone must be crazy or have an awful lot to hide when these idiots are paid for destruction. We are trying to do something constructive with our lives and to teach our Indian children to buy the American way of life. We are one irate American Indian family.

MR. & MRS. WILLIAM J. GIAGO

Vermillion, S. Dak.

Sir / Although I do not condone the destruction of property and the violence of the Indian protest perpetrated at the BIA offices in Washington, I was thoroughly outraged by the condescending, one-sided tone of the TIME article.

The giving of medals and the signing of treaties were made meaningless by the U.S. Government time after time as it became expedient to break treaties so that the white man could have his Western frontier uninhabited and free for the taking.

YVONNE M. PAWELEK

Renton, Wash.

Sir / Shame on the paleface bureaucrats for their ignominious defeat by marauding redskins at the BIA. The last defeat of the palefaces by the redskins took place in 1876 at the Battle of Little Big Horn, but there Custer made a gallant last stand.

RICHARDSON D. BENTON

Chester, N.H.

Segregation on Campus

Sir / Re your article on "voluntary segregation" [Nov. 27]: For some time now black Americans have been legally guaranteed "equal opportunity" for education, but liberals are apparently bothered by the fact that many have not chosen to take advantage of this opportunity. During my years as an undergraduate I've observed the rather blatant phenomenon that black and white college students still prefer to socialize separately. So where does the liberal go from here? Would he like to require that every black student room with a white, and that interracial roommates occupy every fifth dormitory space? Would he make it mandatory for a white student to spend every third date with a black? The good old American liberal just doesn't give up, and he won't be satisfied until all Americans live the way he thinks they should, like the things he says to like and think the thoughts he wants them to think.

CHRISTOPHER BIRD

Willimantic, Conn.

Sir / I was a white civil rights worker back in 1965 when Stokely Carmichael and all the other black leaders wanted integration. None of us could believe that it wasn't the only answer.

I spent time in jail while working in the South. I suffered permanently debilitating injuries in a car accident when I was riding in a SNCC car being shot at by the K.K..K. A few years later I was not allowed inside an auditorium where Carmichael and others were speaking. I do not blame the blacks one bit. When the young blacks were ready to "overcome," too few whites, even among college students, were ready to join them. Now I see that most white students are ready, but it's too late. We have no one to blame but ourselves.

MARIA GITIN

Madison, Wis.

Sir / After I read your article "The Two Societies," I had a mixed reaction. Having attended a college where the enrollment was predominantly white, I know well the feeling one gets when he is an object of curiosity, or when he is patronized excessively by some white students who feel he needs special help, or when he is subjected to outright hatred.

To advocate and practice separatism, black or white, is to sustain ignorance and fear. Whites still have much to learn about blacks, but if we build walls around ourselves, we may expect the continuation of myths, fears and superstitions.

JEFF JEFFERSON

Asheville.N.C.

Sir / Perhaps TIME should not accept so readily what college administrators state. In your article "The Two Societies," Harvard was listed as having little separatism on campus. Not only is there a black theater group and a black choir here, but there are also black tables in the dining rooms. At least three-quarters of the 60 blacks who live in my dorm of 400 are in all-black roommate groups, and this is representative of all of the nonfreshman dormitories.

The article implied that this segregation was caused by a false view of the world among the black students and by their lack of preparedness for academic life. Most of the blacks here are not poor, and few are unprepared for college, but still the majority practices some kind of separatism.

LOUISE A. REID Cambridge, Mass.

Man of the Year

Sir / For Man of the Year: the American prisoner of war. He has endured pain proving that he loves his country, and has spent years away from family and friends. Undoubtedly he also was dying to vote in '72.

RICHARD L. ROLLINS

Annapolis, Md.

Sir / Who's to be Man of the Year? Nixon again? Most probably, but I'd rather cast my vote for Henry Kissinger, the skillful negotiator.

R.J. FABRI

Istanbul

Sir / Man of the Year without a doubt was Senator George McGovern who lost the election but prodded Richard Nixon to the brink of peace.

MARY ANN WALDO

St. Louis

Sir / I nominate Mao Tse-tung as the Man of the Year or, more fittingly, the man of the century. In less than 25 years he has restored the dignity and well-being of the Chinese people, who represent one-quarter of mankind.

L.T. LEUNG

Los Angeles

Sir / I'm for Jonathan Livingston Seagull as Man of the Year--instead of the usual birdbrains that get the nomination.

ARTHUR GLOWKA Stamford, Conn.

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