The U-2 Over the Summit
Sir:
As one citizen of the U.S., I will sleep a little better each night now knowing that this Government has been for some time securing my future by sending reconnaissance expeditions to spy on clever, clandestine and cunning Russia.
MARGARET MORTON
New York City
Sir:
No amount of sugar-coating by your reporting of the U-2 incident or fast footwork by soothing politicians can gloss over the cold, hard, terrifying fact that this nation is provoking war. How many Russian planes have been shot down over the States lately? After this incident, Khrushchev smells like a rose, and America just smells.
L. R. NICHOLL
Colorado Springs, Colo.
Sir:
I prefer a little embarrassment to another Pearl Harbor.
JACK STEPHENSON
Jacksonville
Sir:
Seeing Francis Powers' picture on the cover of your May 16 issue was a genuine surprise. Hats off for a job well done!
CHARLES F. MCDONALD
Philadelphia
Sir:
Your Powers' cover story is a sad example of the "great drama" reduced to a piece of poor reporting under the hashing pressure of a frantic, impersonal effort to meet at any price a merciless deadline.
GEORGE YACOUB
Jamaica, N.Y.
Sir:
Rather than apologizing for being alive, would it not be criminally negligent on the part of the Western peoples not to carry out reconnaissance of Russia? And is it logical to feel apologetic about legitimate self-defense? And is it moral to apologize for discharging freely accepted obligations to your friends? And is it even sane to feel guilty about living up to the ideals of the men who founded the American republic, or trying to?
R. L. WESTINGHOUSE
Florence, Italy
Well, Uh . . .
Sir:
Your writers give me a pain. TIME, May 9, states that Huh, acting President of Korea, rhymes with "uh." How do you pronounce "uh"?
D. H. LUZIUS
Juneau, Alaska
P: Uh.--ED.
Hep to Hip
Sir:
Re your May 2 story on jazz & drugs: your etymology of "hip" is strictly off the cob.
DAN M. MORGENSTERN
New York City
Sir:
How unhip (un-hep) this TIME.
"Hip" replaced the enunciation "hep," which had all the current meanings. Why? Because some hepster preferred the key of i to that of e, just as English vowel changes produced "Jem" for "Jim."
The etymon is in old English wrestling--to have on the hip; to render an opponent powerless because tractionless.
PETER TAMONY
San Francisco
Abstract Coincidence
Sir:
Is Artist Grace Hartigan's pose and striped lounging robe [May 2] more than a coincidental resemblance to that of Matisse's mysterious model in The Purple Robe?
GORDON F. SCHAYE
St. Louis
P: No. It was as unplanned as one of her paintings.--ED.
Long Life & Taxes
Sir:
What the Forand bill means to me: it means that from now to the year 2006, when I will be 65,1 will be burdened with one more heavy tax. To pay this tax, I will be forced to work harder so that my health will fail, and I will finally be able (if I live that long) to take advantage of its benefits.
GERALD SERLIN
Bayside, N.Y.
Sir:
Medical science presents a comical contradiction in taking credit for longer life span and then lobbying against giving us its services.
CLARA MILLS WARD
Metropolis, Ill.
Sir:
I would like to comment on Los Angeles County Hospital. More than 50% of our patients are aged 60 or older. We see people daily who have been rejected by their families, lost all their savings, and with their bodies racked by chronic illness. They have no incentive to get well, no hope of finding a useful place in a society they themselves founded. It seems to me that the problem lies more in what to do with these people after we cure them than in curing them itself.
D. ROSE
Senior Nurse
Los Angeles County Hospital
Los Angeles
Sir:
Your footnote, which states that "the U.S. is the world's only major industrial country without some form of national medical insurance for the aged," completely disregards the fact that under the present medical system our mortality rates are the lowest, our longevity the longest, and our public health the finest of any of these "socialized" countries. Thank goodness our President had the courage to speak out as being "utterly opposed" to any compulsory insurance program.
RICHARD J. HELFMAN
Captain, U.S.A.F.
Eglin Air Force Base, Fla.
How Dry They Were
Sir:
That charming lady who takes issue on Senator John F. Kennedy's age [May 9] probably belongs to my own age bracket, people of such vintage often being apt to look down on youngsters of 42 years of age as "not dry behind the ears."
ALBERT CONTI, 73
Hollywood
Sir:
Thank God that age was not a deciding factor in keeping the following patriots from public service during our struggle for independence: in 1776 Patrick Henry was 40, Thomas Paine was 39, Thomas Jefferson was 33, John Jay was 31, James Madison was 25, and Alexander Hamilton was 19.
Theodore Roosevelt was 42 when he became President.
JAMES J. O'ROURKE JR.
Chicago
Rye on the Rocks
Sir:
Re your May 9 story wherein you wrote that Teacher Levin nearly got the ax for teaching The Catcher in the Rye: I am one up on her.
I got fired. This means that my contract will not be renewed in June. The crime, as cited: attempting to teach The Catcher in the Rye. But before I had a chance to teach the book even one day, Principal (of Male High School) W. S. Milburn, also president of the Louisville board of aldermen and a member of Citizens for Decent Literature, banned the book--without reading it. I protested in vain. Indeed, it was the unheard-of defiance in protesting such a dictum that led to my dismissal.
DONALD M. FIENE
Louisville
Sir:
TIME calls me "Teacher Levin ... a sometime novelist." I prefer to be called Novelist Levin ... a sometime teacher. Five novels; one year of teaching. Nor were adult citizens equally divided. Eight parents objected; some 2,000 went on record endorsing me as a teacher and my wisdom to choose suitable literature for their youngsters.
BEATRICE LEVIN
Tulsa, Okla.
P:Novelist Levin's published work is The Lonely Room (Bobbs-Merrill, 1950). In the hands of her publisher are Indian Summer, Corners of Exile, The Singer and the Summer Song and Off-Season.--ED.
Sir:
Our tenth-grade English class has just finished reading The Catcher in the Rye. We were neither impressed nor corrupted by the language in the book. Nor did we think it a "beautiful and moving" story. Repeating unpleasant language, which most of us have already heard somewhere, was not the point of studying this book. We read it because it is well written, and we learned a lot from discussing Holden Caulfield's problems.
LINDA STRETCH
Germantown Friends School
Philadelphia
Sir:
You may be interested to know that at the instigation of student protest against the stench of its vocabulary, Catcher has recently been removed from circulation by our library.
ELVA MCALLASTER
Professor of English
Greenville College
Greenville, Ill.
Right & Left
Sir:
Your May 2 article on Senator Goldwater was greatly appreciated. It is true that such people as enjoyed Roosevelt's socialism will not adhere to Senator Goldwater's ideas, but there are plenty of students and young people who, disgusted with an older generation's senseless fears, will be glad to carry his banner. We young people grow tired of having older people put us in debt.
D. J. MACDONALD
Burlington, Vt.
Sir:
I have come upon a copy of a new book by Senator Barry Goldwater called The Conscience of a Conservative. I cannot accurately convey to you the shock I experienced at reading a series of proposals which would undo every important social advance in this country over the past 50 years.
M. F. R. SAVARESE
Washington, D.C.
Sir:
How in the world did TIME'S staff ever allow the article on Senator Goldwater to be printed? Even by innuendo the basic news has not been distorted that America appears to have at last produced a Senator with moral courage. Is there hope that the courageous Mr. Goldwater will not be buried, by the reviles and pressures of the liberal, socialistic and left-wing vocal groups in your country and emerge as a true American leader the world so desperately needs?
SOMDEJ THAVI
Bangkok
A Turn at Bat
Sir:
TIME'S May 9 issue erred in stating that Bat Masterson "will not return to the air next season." This program has been renewed by Sealtest Foods.
JAMES F. LUNN
Advertising Manager
Sealtest Foods
New York City
Royal Dutch Man
Sir:
Anent Royal Dutch's Sir Henri Deterding, May 9: when the Winkler County, Texas oil gushers, in the midst of the desert of Texas, hit the headlines across the world in the '20s with "Oil, 10-c- a barrel, water $1," I drove across the trackless sand with tires deflated toward two men near a Dodge coupe with a broken axle and mired in gypsum sand up to the running boards. One was an unshaven, booted, leather-jacketed oilfield-lease hound named Allen; the other, Sir Henri Deterding, immaculately dressed in English tweeds, with a pipe and a diamond stud, and a diamond twice as large in a ring he wore. I said, "Sir Henri, this must be a God-awful experience for you, stranded in the Winkler County desert." His reply: "Compared with traveling in Mesopotamia on a camel with mud up to its arse, this is a boulevard."
JACK E. BRYAN
St. Petersburg, Fla.
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