Fizzled Fireworks?
Sir:
As one of just two Americans (and non-Africans) present at Ghana's "emergency demonstration" against TIME'S alleged "imperialist cowboy propaganda" [at which a pile of copies of TIME was burned], may I offer a single additional comment to your Jan. 4 story.
Far more striking than the odor and abundance of verbal onions flung by speaker after speaker at TIME'S coverage of Kwame Nkrumah and Tom Mboya was the evident, marked apathy of almost the whole audience of half a thousand persons. Their mood, in sharp and significant contrast with the onstage pyrotechnics was, I think, a reassuring earnest of the common sense and natural warmth accorded the U.S. throughout Accra. Restless, unawed, good-humored, but occasionally stirred at mention of their country's independence, the crowd resembled nothing quite so much as a latter-day July 4 gathering of somewhat jaded celebrators.
VICTOR N. Low
Ministry of Education
Kaduna, Northern Nigeria
The Caretaker
Sir:
Thank you for your review of my book The Caretakers [a novel about malpractice in a low-budget mental institution named Canturbury--Dec. 14].
Part of your review is kindly and well-intentioned, I'm sure, and I'm grateful that you recognized the book's anger. I am sorry you find that anger only partially effective, since it could mean other readers will react in kind. Let me assure you that The Caretakers is not so much fiction as fact, deplorable and appalling as this may sound, and that low-budget Canturbury is a typical national picture unfortunately.
I defy anyone with a background of several years' employment in a mental institution to write honestly and objectively of his or her experiences without shocking someone. However, if The Caretakers is so shocking that the real moral of the book--the fact that we are all caretakers of one sort or another--is lost, that I regret.
DARIEL TELFER
Pueblo, Colo.
Hidden Masterpiece
Sir:
Referring to the Jan. 4 article "Hidden Masterpiece: Kassel's Rembrandt," I was surprised to find Rembrandt had painted Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph. My aunt, Miss Ida Friedberger, made a tapestry in 1874 of this picture, and I now find it in my home.
MAUD F. PAUL
Washington
P: See cut.--ED.
Sunny, Generous & Peeved
Sir:
Never "peevish," always sunny and generous (like mischievous, young TIME magazine, in fact), I did not refer to the admirable Arthur Miller as a "writer-cripple" [Jan. 18]. That is Miller's phrase, not mine; it appears in its proper context in a theater piece I wrote for the current Partisan Review.
GORE VIDAL
New York City
At 1,216 m.p.h.
Sir:
In the Dec. 28 issue, TIME reported the reassuring news that the international speed and altitude records had been recaptured from the Soviets by U.S.A.F. pilots flying an F106 and an F-104C. There was a third--the closed circular course speed record--which in terms of military considerations was just as significant as the other two.
The new record of 1,216 m.p.h. on the closed course was set Dec. 11 by Brigadier General Joseph H. Moore, who flew the 62.14-mile course in a little more than three minutes with a load of more than 3 1/2 g* on both plane and pilot through most of the flight. The navigational precision demonstrated in the record run is the same kind required for pinpoint nuclear bombing of underground missile-launching sites, a mission for which the F-105 was designed.
The course was marked on the ground by twelve four-by-four marker posts The flight was made 7 1/2 miles in the air. The slightest violation of the course line would have disqualified the flight. Said General Moore: "It was like running blindfolded at top speed into a completely dark room, then running a perfect circle guided by the voice of someone outside the room." The "voice" outside, of course, was a form of radar ground control similar to that which helps aircraft land in bad weather.
Most important, the record was made by a standard F-105 Thunderchief attached to the Tactical Air Command's 4th Fighter Wing, which had been in regular operation for some time.
MUNDY I. PEALE
President
Republic Aviation Corp.
Farmingdale, N.Y.
Sesostris & Suez
Sir:
Wasn't Sesostris III the Pharaoh who built the first Suez Canal? You leave us uninformed on this interesting point in your Jan. 4 article noting the placing of his statue at the canal entrance.
TIBBS MAXEY
Louisville
P: Pliny (A.D. 23-79) credits Sesostris III (D. 1849 B.C.) with starting a canal connecting the Red Sea and the Nile, making a water route to the Mediterranean.--ED.
What Every Parent Should Read
Sir:
Re your Jan. 18 review of Glendon Swarthout's novel, Where the Boys Are: we are certain that Author Swarthout knows what he is writing about, since almost every line of the review brought laughter at familiar slang and views. Although the sex views and deeds of the novel's vacationers are extremely exaggerated, the book sounds like a text of modern college students and their customs that every parent should read.
BRENDA J. BASLEY
BETSY MORTLOCK
Allegheny College
Meadville, Pa.
Author: Joe Liss
Sir:
It was probably an oversight that the name of Joe Liss was omitted from your review of the TV show The Margaret Bourke-White Story [Jan. 11]. But it was a huge oversight: Joe Liss wrote the script. In addition, he served as everybody's Father Confessor--to the cast, the director, to Maggie Bourke-White and to me.
ALFRED EISENSTAEDT
New York City
Ten for Ten
Sir:
Thank you for putting that article in the Jan. 11 issue of TIME about ten-year-olds only needing ten hours of sleep.
STEVEN ZINTER
(Age 9 1/2)
Minneapolis
Longest Relay
Sir:
In the Jan. 4 article, "The Surprising '50s," you stated: "In 1958 the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. completed the longest (4,000 miles) microwave relay network in the world. TIME erred.
Canada's transcontinental microwave relay system was constructed primarily for telephone service by the Trans-Canada Telephone System. It is operated and maintained by the member companies of that system. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation leases transcontinental television facilities from us--thus making its network (not its microwave relay) the longest in the world.
H. G. YOUNG
Chairman of Management Committee
Trans-Canada Telephone System
Montreal, Que.
Dolphin Talk
Sir:
After reading about dolphins in your Jan 4 issue, my students' and my own doubts about Pliny the Elder's story of the tame dolphin* that carried a boy around and out to sea and back. and romped and gamboled with other boys in the waves, should vanish. Now we can all believe in flying saucers!
DORRANCE S. WHITE
Professor Emeritus
Department of Classics
University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa
Sir:
Dr. John C. Lilly and his talking dolphins reminded my eight-year-old of Lofting's Dr. Doolittle, who was plagued with head colds because he spent so much time with his head under water, trying to learn shellfish talk.
Mary L. Werderman
Pasadena, Calif .
On the Way to Cannibalism?
Sir:
Just finished reading your reasonable, rational article on "that population explosion" [Jan. 11]. What a refreshing bit of positive reporting after the many laments of the prophets of gloom currently heard throughout the land.
CATHERINE GRISDELA
Detroit
Sir:
I'm sure I've never read anything as ambiguous, vacillating and purposely vague as your story on the world's "population explosion."
RICHARD J. MUELLER
Iowa City, Iowa
Sir:
Your deeply moving essay on "that population explosion" leaves the frightening and revolting conclusion that cannibalism is the ultimate solution. The only point left in doubt is the date. The U.N. Department of Economics and Social Affairs' report, quoted in your article, indicates that the problem is not only one of food but also of space. Even if we could feed countless billions, where will they live? No matter how staggering and unbelievable such a fact may be, it is only too, too logical and inexorable.
GINO J. SIMI
Washington, D.C.
Sir:
I have a new solution to the population explosion which will not restrict the birth rate. Why not have our scientists work on shrinking people to--say--one-hundredth ther present size? In this manner our world and all its natural resources will proportionately expand a hundredfold.
CHARLES W. RACK
W. Caldwell, N.J.
* One g is equal to the pull of gravity at the earth's surface.
* Natural History IX; 24 et seq.
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