A Place in the Sun

Sir:

Thank Mr. Delbert Webb [TIME, Aug. 3] for making Sun City possible. The motto of that city should read as a well-known book reads, "Ye must become as little children again."

MARTHA M. EVERT Camp Hill, Pa.

Sir:

God forbid that I should ever commit myself to a "retirement" city. Granted that my bones will creak, my hair will grey, but to cut myself off from the swingy zing of the mainstream of life would really make me old.

(MRS.) GLADYS REINHART CLARK Oak Lawn, Ill.

Sir:

The attitude of the younger people towards our elderly citizens today is "Get them out of our hair at all costs."

Now the propaganda has begun: "Put them in reservations or concentration camps." For that is what the Sun Cities are, no matter how you pretty them up.

O. V. SEMMER Hutchinson, Kansas

Thalidomide

Sir:

The Finkbine case [TIME, Aug. 3] is a touchingly human condemnation of our cruel, vastly illogical abortion laws.

The grave danger caused by the drug thalidomide and the prospect of a hideously deformed child being born as a result of its use should be more than adequate justification for legal abortion -but there are other equally good reasons: many young lives have been wrecked because sexually overzealous youths were forced into "shotgun" marriages at an early age as a result of unwanted pregnancy; many much younger lives have been ruined when children of tender ages have found that they are not really wanted in homes where their birth was an "accident." To liberalize abortion laws would not be to encourage immorality but would, rather, save many worthwhile U.S. citizens from disastrously burdensome problems.

ROBERT F. DORR San Diego

Sir:

As a mother who had German measles during the first trimester of her pregnancy, I sympathize with the agony that Mrs. Finkbine is now experiencing. However, no end, however good it appears, can justify evil means. And killing a living being, be it still unborn, is an evil means. Abortion is murder. My child is normal and healthy despite the statistics she fought. Mrs. Finkbine's may also be normal.

( MRS .) GLORIA T. WELLS Chatsworth, Calif.

Sir:

As to the Finkbines' baby, if there is only a fifty-fifty chance to be normal, why not wait until he is born and kill him if he is abnormal? It would be more consequential.

(THE REV.) JOHN PH. PIETRA Barnabite Fathers Seminary Youngstown, N.Y.

Native Sons

Sir:

In discussing the appointment of Anthony Celebrezze as the new Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, a footnote in the July 27 issue of TIME indicates that "the Census Bureau counts as foreign-born not only those born abroad but also their children . . ."

Lest some native-born citizens fear they have suddenly been classed as aliens, it should be emphasized that the census counts as foreign-born only those persons actually born outside the U.S.

Apparently your footnote is meant to refer to native-born persons of foreign or mixed parentage, a group often referred to, when combined with the foreign-born, as "foreign stock."

RICHARD M. SCAMMON Director Bureau of the Census Washington, D.C.

Political Roll

Sir:

Re the article on the East German children's game [TIME, July 27] it was obviously copied from a game played by Washington adults called "New Frontier." The idea is the same -to roll the dice and, if possible, go forward:

1. White House redecorated; advance one space.

2. Stock market drop; retreat one space.

3. Peace Corps formed; advance three spaces.

4. Nuclear testing resumed; advance five spaces.

5. Urban renewal defeated; retreat one space.

6. Fell in pool; lose a turn.

7. Steel owners told off; retreat to nearest Junior Chamber of Commerce office.

8. Medicare bill defeated; retreat seven spaces.

This puts the player back where he started, but it's not as bad as it seems. Every game includes a cutout cardboard model of Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

(MRS.) BETTYTISKA Williston Park, N.Y.

Sam's Song

Sir:

Bravo on the most complete coverage yet on the Samuel Newhouse dynasty [TIME, July 27]. Having lived on Staten Island for many, many years, we knew the Newhouses and were proud that they were part of the community.

SHEPARD W. DAVIS Coral Gables, Fla.

Sir:

Must we be finally rid of the dictatorial newspaper tycoon only to replace him with a weak, voiceless puppet? Can there be no happy medium?

RITA PETRETTI Kenosha, Wis.

Sir:

In the article on Samuel Newhouse, you state: "Last week, inspired in part by Newhouse's acquisition of New Orleans and in part by an ambition to make headlines, Democratic U.S. Representative Emanuel Celler of Brooklyn announced that the House Judiciary Committee would investigate newspaper monopolies -among them Sam New-house' -as soon as Congress adjourns." In point of fact, the pending study of the concentration of ownership of news media by the Antitrust Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary was not inspired either by Mr. Newhouse's purchase of an existing newspaper monopoly in New Orleans or by an "ambition to make headlines" on my part, as your article erroneously states.

On the contrary, the Antitrust Subcommittee's inquiry was inspired by a longstanding concern over this problem, and in part by the simultaneous closings of the Los Angeles (morning) Examiner by the Hearst Corp. and the Los Angeles (evening) Mirror by the Chandler interests in January 1962, with a consequent division of the newspaper market in our third largest and fastest-growing city into morning and evening newspaper monopolies.

EMANUEL CELLER House of Representatives Washington, B.C.

>> When the House Judiciary Committee announced the beginning of its news media inquiry to reporters last month, the purchase of the New Orleans Times-Picayune and States-Item by Newhouse was specifically listed as a merger to be studied. -ED.

Sir:

Samuel I. Newhouse seems to be above the petty vanity that has typified other press lords. Not only does he allow his many newspapers to be editorially independent of him, he encourages it! This, in my opinion, is the highest order of freedom of the press.

ESTHER BRADFORD ARESTY Gstaad, Switzerland

Churchill Quibbles

SIR:

IN A WEAK AND QUIBBLING REPLY TO LORD BEAVERBROOK [TlME, July 27] WHO POINTED OUT THAT YOU WERE WRONG IN STATING THAT NO BRITISH PRIME MINISTER IN "MODERN TIMES" HAD BEEN A BACHELOR, YOU, SIR, SUGGEST THAT 1911 MAY NOT BE CONSIDERED 'MODERN TIMES." YOUR LAME DEFENSE FOR YOUR ERROR MIGHT HAVE BEEN A TRIFLE LESS LAME IF YOUR GIFTED RESEARCHERS HAD TOLD YOU THAT MR. BALFOUR CEASED TO BE PRIME MINISTER SIX YEARS EARLIER IN DECEMBER, 1905. THIS WOULD STILL HAVE BEEN A QUIBBLE: BUT LESS MISLEADING THAN WHAT YOU WROTE.

RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL SUFFOLK, ENGLAND

>> Gifted researcher says lamely that Balfour was a member of Parliament until 1911, but concedes to Quibbler Churchill. -ED.

New Africa

Sir:

You scored a bull's eye with your superb summarization of the new, independent Africa [TIME, Aug. 3].

My hearty and grateful congratulations for this amazing information about the 27 countries.

If I were a geography teacher, I could hardly imagine anything about the new Africa more comprehensive, instructive, and helpful.

WILLIAM B. LIPPHARD Yonkers, N.Y.

Sir:

What purpose does TIME have in mind in publicizing cannibalism in the Gabon Republic? And the incidence of female circumcision is infinitesimal. Such practices are far from common there and are considered by the citizenry as a shocking aberration to be ceaselessly combatted.

From two years of anthropological research in that hospitable republic, I can assure you that a Kinsey Report on the Gabonese people would reveal far less sexual abnormality than is the case here.

JAMES W. FERNANDEZ Instructor Department of Sociology and Anthropology Smith College Northampton, Mass.

An Artist's Revenge

Sir:

If the stone caricature of the Rev. Mr. Foeken is allowed to remain on the Eusebius Church steeple [TIME, July 27], perhaps he will be consoled to discover that he is not the first churchman to be preserved to immortality by a revengeful artist.

While Michelangelo was working on the fresco The Last Judgment, he was criticized by Pope Paul Ill's master of ceremonies, Biagio da Cesena, for placing so many nudes in a sacred picture. Infuriated, Michelangelo retaliated by putting a portrait of Biagio on the body of Minos, the ruler of the farthest section of hell (the right-hand lower corner of the painting). The offended prelate complained to the Pope, who replied, "Had the painter sent you to Purgatory, I would have used my best efforts to get you released; but I exercise no influence in hell ubi nulla est redemptio."

ELWOOD W. THORNTON JR. Memphis

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