The Plight of Pilot Powers
Sir:
I have no objection to a short prayer for Francis Powers, as some have suggested, but doesn't it seem more important for us to pray for a clearer national direction and a more genuine educational system, so that technicians like Powers might learn more than simply which buttons to push? All the tears, family sentimentality and public sympathy can't wash away the ''damned spot" of Powers' only apparent motive and interest: that $30,000.
The U-2 flight was no crime, but the education, mind and values of its pilot were revealed to be very shallow indeed. If Powers is an accurate representation of the 1960 American, isn't it our country itself that needs praying for?
CHARLES CULOTTA
Los Angeles
Sir:
Francis Powers appears to have altered Nathan Male's famous quotation, "I regret that I have but one life to give for my country."
Powers' version seems to be: "I regret I have but one country to give for my life."
THOMAS F. McNicnoL Upper Darby, Pa.
Sir:
Re the nameless U.S. official's reference to Francis Powers as "no Nathan Hale," it is time we remembered that Mr. Kale's inspiring words were uttered on the gallows, not in the prisoner's dock. Heroic last words should not be compared with a defense action in a trial at law, albeit a "rigged" trial.
D. MICHAEL HARVEY Falls Church, Va.
Sir:
Put Powers on double his former salary until he is able to resume his former life and freedom.
JANET RENGER Palos Verdes Estates, Calif.
The Good B & the Non-B
Sir:
Re your article on non-books, we propose similar designations in other categories: non-motion pictures (a big slice of Hollywood, all skiing, certainly Cinerama); non-newspapers (everything but the news); non-education (the list is too long to begin here).
Oh, the possibilities are limitless! Thanks be unto TIME for a very useful new label (and for a consistently interesting magazine).
LYNN OLSON
Princeton, N.J.
Sir:
Praises "B" for your article, "The Era of Non-B"! How could you omit the terrible traffic of textbooks in the field of education, the area of lingo-jargon, grammatical error, meaningless repetition of four words (fundamental, needs, experiences, objectives), padded with graphs, charts, tables and diagrams that imply the reader may not comprehend the value of the paragraph, and therefore might catch it in a box?
JEAN BRIGHAM
Cohasset, Mass.
Sir:
Your Aug. 22 article, "The Era of Non-B," was a courageous and much needed editorial. Your reviews--indeed the whole "back of the book" in TIME--are generally forthright, even if occasionally playful. (And that's another story.) I did want you to know that a book critic and book writer appreciated what you said.
HERBERT MITGANG*
Great Neck, N.Y.
Sir:
The Bible is the perfect nonbook, an anthology of self-help and inspirational works, entirely ghostwritten.
HUGH H. HIGGINS
Manchester, Mich.
Sir:
The bookseller's hack is not a new figure in literature, as I am sure you are aware. And many notable men have played the role. Oliver Goldsmith wrote a book about birds, full of astounding nonsense, for a London bookseller, and Charles Dickens produced a lamentable Child's History of England. Both works were undertaken for the same reason --the gentlemen needed money, a chronic need among 90% of authors, then and now.
LEONARD WIBBERLEY Hermosa Beach, Calif.
Sir:
TIME attempted to make a clear distinction between books and non-books. I wish that it had also attempted to distinguish as clearly between truth and non-truth in its references to Hawthorn Books, Inc. and to me.
The Hawthorn title mentioned as "recent" in the listing of "non-books," 1000 Inspirational Things, was published in 1948 by the Spencer Press of Chicago, as casual inspection of the volume itself can demonstrate.
It is distributed by Hawthorn.
K. S. Ginger Vice President and General Manager Hawthorn Books, Inc. New York City
P:TIME fell victim to Hawthorn's recent inspirational repromotion.--ED.
Sir:
Whatever you wish to say about the merits of my current novel, The Chapman Report, is your privilege. However, this novel was a total personal creative effort, seriously approached. Your statement that the book was hatched by Victor Weybright of Signet is an absolute lie. The book was partially written when Weybright offered to buy future reprint rights, in advance, sight unseen. Neither he nor anyone else had anything to do with the book or saw a word of it until it was completed.
IRVING WALLACE Rome
P:TIME respects its sources--who were watching the incubator.--ED.
Music To Be President By
Sir:
We were delighted to see the column on favorite music of the candidates but disappointed that no credit was given to WGMS, the Washington radio station that first announced the choices.
WGMS actually serenaded the President long before Paul Hume began serenading presidential hopefuls on our station. While President Eisenhower was recovering from his 1955 heart attack, WGMS piped background music to the President's Walter Reed Hospital room.
Musically, Ike is nonpartisan. Like Jack Kennedy he enjoys Berlioz (his choice is the Symphonie Fantastique) and Moussorgsky's Boris Godunov. And he agrees with Vice President Nixon on his choice of music from Oklahoma!
SOL HURWITZ
WGMS
Washington
Truman & Dewey
Sir:
The Republicans are definitely responsible for the alltime low prestige of the U.S. in the international sphere. What you really need is a Truman, but since you cannot get him, Kennedy is the only hope.
KULDIP SINGH
Rangoon, Burma
Sir:
I haven't heard much comment on Thomas E. Dewey's masterful speech at the Republican National Convention.
In spite of the fact that he says he has retired from politics, I wish we could hear more from him during the campaign. We need him.
CHARLOTTE H. CURTIS Burbank, Calif.
Science & Theology
Sir:
Lois Hook asks: "Whatever will the churches say when the biochemists successfully synthesize protoplasm?" Answer: simply that God has at last let them in on one of his own formulas.
(THE REV.) F. C. LIGHTBOURN
Literary Editor The Living Church Milwaukee, Wis.
Sir:
As a teacher of philosophy in a Catholic seminary for the training of students for the priesthood, I have been teaching for years the possibility of synthetic biogenesis. The only thing that amazes us in this matter is that it is taking the scientists so long to accomplish it. As a reality, it will fit in perfectly with Thomistic philosophy and theology. This, I think, should take us off the hook we were never really on and leave Lois dangling there instead.
(THE REV.) W. J. RING St. Peter's Seminary London, Ont.
It's Pop That Pays
Sir:
Our soft drink industry feels justly proud of our new $30 million West Virginia Medical school. However, attention should be called to the fact that during its erection the number of bottling firms in this state has decreased from 123 to 70. Payrolls, it is estimated, have been reduced $15,000 weekly since the Lpenny-a-bottle] tax began in 1951. We are convinced that if such a tax is proper and fair in principle it is equally fair for all products sold, including magazines, food, clothing, etc.
MAHLON G. GUTHRIE President
Seven-Up Bottling Co., Inc. Charleston, W. Va.
Sir:
I am a brand-new subscriber and I must say I am impressed! I did not expect you to go to such lengths to make my first issue of such personal interest.
I refer to the Aug. 22 article on the new medical center at West Virginia University. While I am personally thrilled at this progress in "my old home town," I feel a touch of sorrow, too, for it would be of far greater significance to some of my ancestors.
Many years ago my great-grandfather, who was one of Morgantown's early settlers, played a large part in the founding of West Virginia University. It was on some of his land that the university was first established.
You give the credit for this new medical center to pop, but I shall always give at least part of the credit to Grandpop!
GAY WILSON
Libertyville, 111.
Living Latin
Sir:
"lo, lo, omnes adsunt," indeed! We who teach Latin would do a far greater service to the cause if we channeled pupil interest toward the task of learning Latin rather than into such academic (sic) shenanigans as chariot racing [an event at the Albuquerque convention of Latin students].
The intelligent 20th century teen-ager will work hard at Latin when he is shown some of the many genuine values in such study. We need not always entertain him with superficialities.
FRED MOORE Chairman,
Language Department Riverside High School Painesville, Ohio
Sir:
Having been forced to Latin-tutor my own high school boy these past years in a typically language-dead high school of South Dakota, my heart leapt to read this sentence in your "Roman Holiday" recently: "In Charleston, S. Dak. Latin was so unpopular six years ago that it was almost dropped; now one school has 88 Latin students." But alas, though I would like to lock arms with these classical philologists, I just cannot find a Charleston in S. Dak.
(THE REV.) T. R. BAUDLER Zion American Lutheran Church Eureka, S. Dak.
P:TiME erravit via. It's Charleston, S.C.-- ED.
Mud in Their Eyes
Sir:
Thank you for calling attention to the stupidity shown by the California Stale Department of Social Welfare in closing Melody Workshop, the nursery school in which Lila Joralemon actually taught children (at the risk of wounding their psyches) and where they apparently enjoyed being taught. Progressivism in education has successfully extended from nursery school through graduate school. In real education, according to the ruling progressivists, we take a serious chance of impairing our mental health. Let us bravely take this wild chance once more--if we can somehow get the entrenched life-adjustment people to take the mud pies elsewhere.
SAMUEL WITHERS Associate Director Council for Basic Education Washington, D.C.
Sir:
Well, I will be blagstaggered. I am 24 and have only recently recovered from a rather severe case of acne. Doubtless having been caused by my unscientific, thoughtless old grandmother who taught me to read when I was only three, it was aggravated by my college education. I shall not let my eight-month-old son near a primer until he is out of his teens. He will then have such a clear complexion and sunny personality that the California State Department of Social Welfare will love him. He will also be so ignorant that he will be able to work only as a welfare department mud-pie inspector.
EARL A. TAYLOR
Director
Reading and Study Skills Center, Inc. New York City
Sir:
Many of your readers may be skeptical of the Wilmington librarian's ability to read and comprehend 20,000 w.p.m., but her speed is not at all remarkable. Without having taken Miss Wood's course, I have trained myself to read and comprehend 42,316 w.p.m. Last night before retiring, I effortlessly read the collected sermons of John Tillotson (ten vols.), three volumes of Greek tragedies (English translation), volumes 71-75 of TIME, an abridgement of St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica (in Latin), the Bible (R.S.V.), and Wednesday's edition of the Southeast Missourian. I have improved Miss Wood's "whirlaway motion"; I use a "spin-drive cum corkscrew motion," which may account in part for my extra speed.
LELAND D. PETERSON Assistant Professor Southeast Missouri State College Cape Girardeau, Mo. fare will love him. He will also be so ignorant that he will be able to work only as a welfare department mud-pie inspector.
WILLIAM W. PORTERFIELD Chapel Hill, N.C.
20,000 W.P.M.
Sir:
Your Aug. 22 article "Read Faster and Better" was out of this world--suspended in an optimistic orbit all its own.
Having devoted 25 years to research in reading and taken over 10,000 readers' eye-movement photographs--the only objective test of speed reading--I have encountered only one person who could read at 2,000 words per minute (with poor comprehension) and five who could read at 1,000 w.p.m.
A study of college professors and graduate students at the University of Michigan unearthed one person who could read at 596 and five who could exceed 500 w.p.m.
All this tends to make me believe that the teacher who claims to have taught people to read at 6,000 to 14,000 w.p.m. has missed her true vocation--writing science fiction.
EARL A. TAYLOR Director
Reading and Study Skills Center, Inc. New York City
Sir:
Many of your readers may be skeptical of the Wilmington librarian's ability to read and comprehend 20,000 w.p.m., but her speed is not at all remarkable. Without having taken Miss Wood's course, I have trained myself to read and comprehend 42,316 w.p.m. Last night before retiring, I effortlessly read the collected sermons of John Tillotson (ten vols.), three volumes of Greek tragedies (English translation), volumes 71-75 of TIME, an abridgement of St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica (in Latin), the Bible (R.S.V.), and Wednesday's edition of the Southeast Missourian. I have improved Miss Wood's "whirlaway motion"; I use a "spin-drive cum corkscrew motion," which may account in part for my extra speed.
LELAND D. PETERSON Assistant Professor Southeast Missouri State College Cape Girardeau, Mo.
-Editor & narrator of the book Lincoln As They Saw Him, and an editor of the Sunday New York Times,
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