Patrick Smith's Mailbag

By Patrick Smith

What emotions are most likely to incite a reader to write to TIME? Our unscientific survey reveals that those whose opinions have been happily confirmed in our pages are a lot less likely to let us know about it than readers who are "appalled," "infuriated" or "outraged" (the three most popular words in the mad mail).

--WHEN LETTER WRITERS ATTACK: Razor-edged vituperation may not add to enlightened discourse, but it has its pleasures--when you're not on the receiving end, at least. Our readers get wrathful at outspoken supporters of controversial politics, such as Lisa Bochard [NATION, May 24], shown with her M-16, whose recommendation that "teachers should be encouraged to have guns" earned the animus of 52: "When I read that, I had to scream." "Bochard's pathological relationship with her weapon makes me hope there are no little children who call her Mommy." "Pistol-packing pedagogues can teach the four Rs: readin', 'ritin', 'rithmetic and 'rmed response." "Instead of sending a disruptive student to the principal, the teacher could just shoot him in the kneecap." "Hey, Lisa! Get rid of the gun, get help and get a life!" CHOICE EPITHETS FOR TIME'S STAFF FROM THE TICKED-OFF

--"moronic, meddling, liberal whiners" --"childish nitpickers" --"Northeast left-wing ninnyhammers" --"narrow-minded pinheads" --"reactionary corporate propagandists"

BEAM ME UP, ALBERT

Maybe it was fallout from the gray matter that conceived E=mc2 or the fact that it was the week after a full moon, but something prompted an outburst of weirdness in response to the June 28 Science story on Einstein's brain. The first symptom was the declaration from Missouri's self-proclaimed "Prophet King" Kenna Farris: "I would allow science to study my brain, as Einstein's is being studied, but I am taking it with me after I rise from the dead." Next came word from a Michigan woman who claimed, "Like Einstein, I am an avatar (a possessor of a Universal Mind), as well as the reincarnation of the Prophet Isaiah. At present, I am on hold, waiting to translate (die and take my body with me)." Last, a South Carolina minister said, "When we fully understand and accept the power of strenuous mental exercise to increase our capacity for works of genius, we may all ride through space on a beam of mental light and meet Einstein himself."

LETTERS Q & A

Q. "Ellen Browning Scripps was on the cover of your Feb. 22, 1926, issue. Was she the first woman on TIME's cover?"

A. No. "Miss Ellen," the eminent 89-year-old philanthropist, was the eighth. First was Italian stage actress Eleanora Duse, whose portrait ran on the July 30, 1923, issue. The cover story, a little over one column long (not unusual in those days), noted, "She preferred to make entrances unnoticed in the crowd, suddenly to step forward and carry the play away with the splendor of her fervor."

THE BOX SCORE ACTRESS COVERS OF THE '90s, MAIL COUNT

SUSAN SARANDON AND GEENA DAVIS June 24, 1991 339 JODIE FOSTER Nov. 14, 1991 58 DIANE KEATON, BETTE MIDLER AND GOLDIE HAWN Oct. 7, 1996 188 ELLEN DEGENERES April 14, 1997 2,085