Digging Down Under
Sir:
Thank you for your commendable tongue-twisting, throat-throttling, teeth-twitching review [Feb. 25] of Smiley.
MELVILLE MORRIS JR. Boston
Sir:
I don't wish to appear to be overly inquisitive, but I would like to put a question to the reviewer of Smiley: Did he or did he not like the movie?
A. ROBERT KASSIN Brooklyn
P:He said it was bokker.--ED. Sir:
Because TIME didn't print a glossary, Are brickbats flying in, I wonder? Your "Smiley" leaves me at a lossary--I just don't dig so deep Down Under.
BUELL R. SNYDER
Beachwood, N.J.
P:A bludger is a sleazy hood, Flat stoney is broke as can be. Bokker means it's bloody good, And a basket of oranges is she.--ED.
Southern Battleground
Sir:
Re your Feb. 18 cover story on Montgomery's Martin Luther King: Your lack of taste is only surpassed by your abysmal ignorance.
(MRS.) WILLEY-GAYLE MARTIN Montgomery, Ala.
Sir:
Kudos for your article, and a pox on the bigoted segregationists of Montgomery, Ala. Thank you for opening my eyes.
TONY VEHE Gstaad, Switzerland
Sir:
Why must humanity spawn so many little Talmadges--and so few great Kings?
ROBERT G. STOLZE Belleville, Ill.
Sir:
I have tolerated your slanted treatment of the South and Southerners because I enjoyed reading other sections of TIME; but your picture of the "Montgomery Battleground" is too much to take. My friends do not wear "wool hats" or carry sticks of dynamite, nor have they ever condoned any violence against the colored people or ever attended any mass meetings to organize against Negroes or belong to the Ku Klux Klan. That there are Christians among the ignorant whites may be almost unbelievable to your intelligent readers in the North. My friends do have one thing in common: they have or are becoming nonsubscribers and nonreaders of your magazine.
ASHTON H. GARY LaGrange, Ga.
Sir:
TIME continues its insults to the South with its cover portrait of a Negro preacher, who spends his time agitating equality of the races.
We only read TIME to see what new slur it has for the white people of the South, whether it is race trouble in Georgia or Mississippi, or a goose pulling in South Carolina.
W. B. BURCH Winter Garden, Fla.
P:TIME brings all things. The cruel and ancient "sport" of goose pulling (see cut) no longer exists in South Carolina.
--ED.
Sir:
What happened to copies of the Feb. 18 issue in the South ?
R. D. FENTRISS Valparaiso, Ind.
P:A sellout.--ED.
Feathered Pedestrian
Sir:
I hold no brief for the 1957 car models described in your Feb. 18 Letters column, but on behalf of my fellow citizens of this state, I resent Mrs. McKinley's remarks. The road runner or chaparral cock is a cheerful bird, a curious delight to the traveler, an unassuming and, indeed, pedestrian fellow--the antithesis of the long, loud, brassy products designed for conspicuous consumption by the free-wheeling denizens of the freeways.
ALFRED P. WHITTAKER Santa Fe, N. Mex.
Sir:
You should see the admiring regards every time one of these "new shapes of motion itself," one of these Gesamtkunstwerke, glides like a fairy queen through the mass of beetle-shaped, mud-colored "utility" cars surrounding us here.
KARL THEO HEINRICH Saarbruecken, West Germany
Sir:
The weirder they are, the more noticeable the advertisement that the owner can afford a brand-new car.
MRS. HENRY BLAKISTON WILKINS Washington, B.C.
The Middle East
Sir:
The Gaza Strip controversy constitutes an example of the problem that is causing many U.S. officials to lose faith in the U.N. I agree with Senator Knowland that a double standard on international policy may make the U.S. and the U.N. look as two-faced as the mythological Janus, but the U.N. should adopt some kind of "speak loudly and carry a big stick" policy with some of these countries which are causing it to lose prestige in the world, and which may eventually cause it to meet the same unfortunate termination which the old League of Nations met.
DONALD L. LEININGER San Jose, Calif.
Sir:
TIME captions U.N. Delegate Knowland as "a bulldozer in the forest" on the question of sanctions for Israel. Knowland is urging consistent application of principles of international justice and morality to all nations alike; Dulles and Eisenhower have erected a crazy-quilt patchwork of inconsistency in foreign policy, and Knowland will lead them out of the woods if they will only stop and listen.
M. HUNTER BROWN, M.D. Los Angeles
Sir: I don't think the State of Israel has any right to exist, but since it does it is shameful duplicity on the part of the U.S. and the U.N. to grant the end without granting the means.
CHARLES S. ALDERSON Chicago
Blight of Youth
Sir:
Dermatologist Robert MacKenna has performed a yeoman's service for the much-maligned teenager by calling attention to one of his real problems--acne--and its serious aspects [Feb. 11] . . .
DAVID FISHER, M.D. Chicago
Sir:
The medications prescribed by Dr. MacKenna sound fine to me, but whatever happened to the treatment with the patient's own blood? When I had acne as a boy in Vienna, my physician used to give me a shot of an antistreptococcic agent every other day, and between days, injections with my own blood. After two months I was practically rid of the acne.
OLIVER BRYK
Washington, D.C.
P:This type of treatment was commonly used in years past but is not now regarded by medical authorities as effective.--ED.
Fine Young Couple
Sir:
H.M. Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh are two fine people who by their way of life make no mean contribution to the maintenance and consolidation of friendship and good will among the peoples of the West, of Africa and of Asia; yet TIME [Feb. 18] gives space to scurrilous rumors about their private activities.
I. THOMSON
Montreal
Sir:
Why hint that things are wrong when duty takes a man from his home for four months? And why imply that if a couple don't have a baby in five years they are out of love ? Where is your balanced judgment?
(THE VERY REV.) H.C.L. HEYWOOD
Provost of Southwell Southwell, Nottinghamshire, England
Sir:
English, Greek, or French South African, or Latin; Almost any wench Would cotton to Mountbatten.
R. M. AND J. J. POWERS
Boston
Friendly Exchange
Sir:
How could you stir us up this way with the provocative information that wealthy King Saud's gift to Ike was a secret [Feb. 18]? We keep imagining a locked room somewhere in the White House, unknown even to Mamie, in which is hidden a bevy of veiled and beauteous dancing girls.
THEODOSIA C. LESTER West Acton, Mass.
P:The secret is out. Saud gave Ike a scimitar in a lavishly jeweled scabbard. Ike gave Saud an original painting of a Colorado landscape by a well-known amateur artist, bearing the initials D.D.E. in its corner, plus a desk set. --ED.
Welcome Mat?
Sir:
After Washington has invited so many distinguished guests to the U.S., one wonders why it has never bothered to invite Franco--a man who was among the first to recognize the dangers of Communism.
HANS WITVOET
San Bernardino, Calif.
Poet Y. Critic
Sir:
Critic John Ciardi's boorish assault on Anne Lindbergh's verse [Feb. 18] sounds suspiciously like the hysterical protest of one who fears that readers may be lured away from the jabberwocky school of modern verse, of which he considers himself the grand high panjandrum.
CATHERINE CARMICHAEL Staten Island, N.Y.
Sir:
Poetry should be judged qua poetry, not by the name in the upper left-hand corner of the MS.--so orchids to one John Ciardi for his criticism of Anne Lindbergh's poetry. In The Unicorn, as in all her other books, she sees and thinks and feels with monotonous regularity. She may be a splendid person, but she's a lousy poet. Critic Ciardi is so right, and I'm glad he had the courage to speak up.
Louis B. KIRK Cleveland Heights, Ohio
Sir:
Ciardi's Dilemma
He shot at a doe With a round of scorn, And got himself gored By a unicorn.
ZELMA H. MEEK Acampo, Calif.
Country Slickers
Sir:
Our deep appreciation of the factual appraisal of America's weekly editors in your Feb. 4 Press section. It's ten times tougher to face up to the obligations of printing all the news fairly and fully in a small town than it is in a city.
ALAN C. MCINTOSH President
Weekly Newspaper Representatives, Inc. New York City
Sir:
In a vague and indefinable way I am irritated by your remarks about weekly papers, probably because we were not included. I don't suggest you applaud the Enterprise's editorial gambits: "Don't move the girls; move the school," and the fingerprinting of all Nevada clergymen. The first we won hands down, and the town of Searchlight dutifully moved the grade school 500 yards from the nearest crib to conform with the law. The latter matter is in flux. But I do suggest that we have more fun, give greater pleasure and outrage to more people and perform a far higher duty to civilization than all the editors of weeklies who are fretted for integration, gambling and their own "good name." These matters are strictly for the birds and only worth consideration in whatever may be the press of Big Rock Candy Mountain.
Lucius BEEBE
The Territorial Enterprise Virginia City, Nev.
Ghost Notes
Sir:
It is with considerable interest that I read your Feb. 18 article "Ghost Stories." You refer to the "lens-shy ghost" who smashed the photographer's camera as a "poltergeist." That term is usually used to describe ghosts who throw things about. I had some experience with these "unquiet spirits" when I lived in a certain house in Glen Cove, L.I. several years ago.
R. M. KUCZABINSKI New York City
Sir:
My brother, an artist, died last year, and his ghost has now taught me to paint.
MARY ANN METZEN Dighton, Mass.
Sir:
I'm inclined to think that St. John Bosco was suffering from hallucinations, and was ripe meat for the practical jokers who ganged up on him at the crucial hour of midnight.
BERT JOHNSON Selah, Wash.
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