Digging the Digger

Sir: That was a nice Hanukkah gift you sent us: the cover story on Dr. Nelson Glueck [Dec. 13].

You dug into him as skillfully as he digs into the soil of the Holy Land. And you produced a gem.

I have always contended that TIME must make Judaism out to be exotic. Hitherto that has precluded the highlighting of a Reform rabbi, who, after all, is usually beardless and unquaint-looking. You solved the problem beautifully, producing a turbaned Nelson Glueck. My compliments! Thanks, too, for showing him also in civvies.

RABBI SAMUEL M. SILVER Stamford, Conn.

Sir: Men like Mr. Glueck who spend their lifetime serving God and their fellow man go sometimes without being noticed. Biblical scholars who serve all mankind and their God are unique.

PETER MOLAY Cleveland Heights, Ohio

Sir: Your article is the most conclusive proof that the Holy Bible is true history. It should make any skeptic stop and listen when Billy Graham or any preacher begins a statement with "The Bible says."

PETER E. CULLOM Ret. A.F. Chaplain Washington, D.C.

Kennedyana

Sir: I hold that many of the tributes to J.F.K. are fitting. One of his pet projects, the Peace Corps, for example, could be rightly rechristened the Kennedy Corps. The Kennedy Memorial Library fund in Boston is also a fair gesture. However, Kennedyana, the Kennedy International Airport, Cape Kennedy, etc., are all exceeding the bounds of respect and entering the absurd.

The nation is gripped with a falsely intensified grief that is causing a disgusting outbreak of irrationality. People are acting on impulse. John F. Kennedy was not a modern Paul Bunyan.

It would be a far more patriotic and respectful act for a U.S. citizen to stop the bandwagon of pseudo-grief before they rename New York's Seventh Avenue "Avenue of the Kennedys."

WALTER J. PFEIL Schenectady, N.Y.

Sir: I was very disappointed in my fellow Americans when I read that the city council of Cape Canaveral, Fla., is objecting to changing the name of the cape to "Cape Kennedy."

All over the world people are changing the names of schools, streets and towns to honor our late President. Shouldn't Americans join this tribute? And what place in the U.S. is so closely associated with the century--the very decades--that produced John Kennedy as the site of our space triumphs?

John Kennedy gave his life for his country. Cannot the people of a small town give up sentimental attachment to a name of obscure meaning in order to honor him?

MARJORIE SMITH Agana, Guam

Mrs. L.B.J.

Sir: So Lady Bird Johnson--strictly in the time she could spare from shopping, entertaining, and running a household--was able to run up the contents of her handbag into a $5,000,000 estate [Nov. 29]. Such talents ought to be applied more widely. If J.F.K. thought it not robbery to make his brother Attorney General, then by golly L.B.J. owes it to the nation to make his wife Secretary of the Treasury! We may be able to shake this national debt thing yet!

RICHARD R. MOORE Rochester, N.Y.

One Award After Another

Sir: Edmund Wilson was one of the recipients of the Presidential Medals of Freedom awarded by President Johnson at the White House [Dec. 6]--the same Edmund Wilson who was recently "awarded" a fine of more than $25,000 for failing to file federal income tax returns for a twelve-year period. Unbelievable!

PHILIP E. COATES Charlottesville, Va.

Man of the Year

Sir: Our late President and his widow, together, for they have done more for our country than most of us can comprehend.

MR. & MRS. GERALD E. KNIGHT Plainfield, N.H.

Sir: No one has given so generously to the cause of human rights and world peace as did President John F. Kennedy. He should not only be chosen Man of the Year, but be awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.

ANA MARIA VICK Mexico City

Sir: The Woman of the Year: Jackie Kennedy. We men forget easily and readily when it comes to the defense of our hegemony in politics and professions that women--and mothers in particular--deserve a higher place in world affairs.

Let Jackie Kennedy and Nina Khrushchev get together on basic matters of the two leading nations! There would be less pettiness and fewer deadlocks in the struggle for world peace.

EBERHARD ROTMANN Lima, Peru

Sir: If the Man of the Year is the one who most affects the news for good or ill, then you have no choice but the President's assassin.

But for pity's sake, spare us that indignity, and pass on to the one who did the most to turn that tragedy into a kind of solemn triumph: our First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy.

I had not been one of her admirers until faced with her utter nobility in circumstances where she could have been forgiven almost any weakness--even panic.

MARG RIETTE M. HAMLETT San Antonio

Sir: Undoubtedly it will be Lee H. Oswald who will be selected as Man of the Year, but may I suggest that the title this year be changed to "Alleged Man of the Year"? This would still the voices of those pettifoggers who will protest that Oswald was not actually proved guilty in a court of law.

L. E. LEVINTHAL Larchmont, N.Y.

Sir: The more I read, the more I believe that the Peace Corps will be recorded as Kennedy's greatest contribution to humanity. I propose that the men (and women) of the Peace Corps be named Men of the Year.

DUANE ECHELBERG Osbourn High School Manassas, Va.

Sir: With all due respect to our beloved late President, I believe there can be no doubt that the man who has most influenced the news and the course of events this year is the American Negro. He has sealed his nomination with his blood.

RONALD E. SCHLOSSER Philadelphia

Sir: For his loving spirit, effectiveness, and unrelenting determination to secure first-class citizenship for the American Negro--the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

JOHN R. NEUBERT Binghamton, N.Y.

Sir: Jomo ("Burning Spear") Kenyatta is my Man of the Year.

JAFFERY SULEMAN KIYINGI Nairobi

Sir: U Thant of the United Nations. What he says rings round the world and what he does promotes the peace of the world.

TET KHAUNG Yamethin, Burma

Sir: I understand that the Man of the Year must have been influential for good or evil. In the latter category I nominate the inventor of the pop-top beer can.

STEPHEN C. BLAKESLEE JR.

New York City Sir: For his efforts to give the world of science a humanitarian conscience and thereby provide an intelligent formula for the resolution of man's dilemma, Dr. Linus Pauling should be considered.

PAUL W. RICHARDS Parma, Ohio

Sir: Robert S. McNamara--the single girl's best friend. His decision to exempt married men from the draft has been the biggest and best impetus for marriage since the shotgun! MRS. ROBERT M. ARMSTRONG (recently married) Battle Creek, Mich.

Mrs. Paine's Help

Sir: In your references to Mrs. Ruth Paine, who befriended Marina Oswald and her two baby daughters [Dec. 6], you reported that she is a Russian immigrant. She is not. Mrs. Paine was born in New York, lived in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas, in that order.

Mrs. Paine offered Marina Oswald refuge in her home primarily as one human being offering aid to another in distress.

Mrs. Paine did not know that Oswald had hidden a gun in the garage. As a Quaker, she would not have permitted it, although it is within the law and a relatively common practice in Texas to keep a weapon in the house.

By the way, Mrs. Paine was a supporter of President Kennedy, and her house enjoyed a victory celebration upon his election.

GEORGE GALERSTEIN Dallas

Word Painting

Sir: TIME presumed to change the title of a Salvador Dali painting from his spelling GALACIDALACIDESOXIRIBUNUCLEICACID to the more orderly GALACIDALACIDE-OXYRIBONUCLEICACID. Would you paint over a piece of his canvas?

CHARLOTTE THOMPSON New York City

> We don't paint much, but Artist Dali likes our spelling. Says he: "TIME is right.

It is a very good correction. The catalogue is wrong. Merci."--ED.

Ex-Sex

Sir: I enjoyed your piece about ex-sex queens of Hollywood [Dec. 13]. You do a public service in so clearly distinguishing them from actresses. I wish there had been someone to wise me up last year when I made the disastrous mistake of casting Miss Rita Hayworth in my first Broadway play, Step on a Crack.

We should have all stayed in bed.

BERNARD EVSLIN New Rochelle, N.Y.

Sir: I have long looked forward to the distinction of "making TIME," but having made the grade in your story of the sex shortage in Hollywood, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Unfortunately for everyone, you are right--there are no shimmering stars to replace the big ones we know. But even more unfortunate for the actresses of the new generation is the fact that the big star-making machines that built up Lana's sweater, lowered Jane's decolletage and then put them on display in countless films, are no longer in existence. We find that we have to do it on our own, and it "ain't easy." The T.N.T. is there, but the only explosions come from the frustrations of not being able to strut our stuff too.

RUTA LEE Hollywood

Quite Right

Sir: Ah, that write-up on Actor Laurence Harvey [Dec. 6] had an old TIME flavor. I thought perhaps the anonymous chap with the curare -dipped stiletto had been put to pasture and was perhaps pursuing some hobby, like milking rattlesnakes. It would appear instead that he merely paused to sharpen his fangs. While it is difficult to work up much sympathy for the victim, who is probably tapping his glass slipper in protest, any poor bastard blitzed with such deft and delicate razor strokes is deserving of pity. Wait until he tries to turn the other cheek.

EARL SMITH Van Nuys, Calif.

Sir: Perhaps the reason that Mr. Harvey called me "that ghastly woman" is that I protested indignantly when I learned he was going to play my lover in the movie Walk on the Wild Side. I had seen Mr. Harvey make love on the screen, which he does aloofly, as if he were a playing card--the jack of clubs. He lifts one knee defensively so that the heroine, whom he is supposed to adore, has to make a sudden flanking movement if she wishes to embrace him. Mr. Harvey whacks away at nearly all the heroines whom he has to embrace in films. It is safer than denouncing critics.

CAPUCINE Lausanne, Switzerland

Sir: Thanks for spelling my name right.

LAURENCE HARVEY Hollywood

Don't Count Your Eggs Before We Lay Them

Sir: Quoted below is a section from the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which will correct the misconception of Artemis of Ephesus you printed in a caption [Dec. 13]. "The usual figure of the Ephesian Artemis, which was said in the first instance to have fallen from heaven, is in the form of a female with many breasts, the symbol of productivity or a token of her function as the all-nourishing mother." Ostrich eggs indeed!

RICHARD T. MACSPARRAN Vienna, Va.

> According to Alfons Wotschitzky, director of the Archaeological Institute of the University of Innsbruck, "The egglike objects just above [Artemis'] waist, formerly considered as multiple female breasts, are now correctly interpreted as ostrich eggs decorating her garment. Ostrich eggs, as a symbol of fertility, may still be found today in nearly every Greek village church."--ED.

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