Man of the Year

Sir: The people nominated so far have all affected history in one way or another. Yet the people I cast my vote for have received comparatively little coverage in magazines or newspapers. They have, however, exercised a right that Americans of long ago fought for, and that many more Americans of today shun. It is the right to vote, and the people I nominate are the Venezuelans who defied death to vote two weeks ago. These people braved pro-Communist terrorism just to vote, when a little sprinkle is enough to make most of us stay home.

BILL CLINKENBEARD St. Joseph, Mo.

Sir: For ten years you and I have disagreed as to who is the Man of the Year. Surely this year we can concur in the choice of John Fitzgerald Kennedy!

MURRAY BECKERMAN Rochester

Sir: The American investors. They refused to panic at the tragic death of President Kennedy and thereby averted a possible worldwide crash.

JOHN A. WRIGHT East Setanket, N.Y.

Sir: Mr. Pierre Salinger--a man who, lost and forgotten in the turmoil in the aftermath of the tragic assassination, was perhaps closer to Mr. Kennedy than was any other of the late President's group of immediate political partners.

CLAUDIA MCCLURE Baltimore

Sir: Rep. H. R. Gross, who, amid all the hysteria and the breast-beating, had the moral courage to ask his cohorts in the House of Representatives who was going to pay the tab for the eternal flame in Arlington.

JAMES H. JONES Forest Park, Ga.

Sir: I select the "Hatemonger." He should be shown as a young man with two rifles under his arm (Oswald's and Beckwith's), copies of Das Kapital and Mein Kampf in the other hand, and a police dog at his side. This would cover the haters from Southeast Asia to South Africa to Alabama.

AL MILLER St. Louis

Sir: Senator Barry Goldwater. Once so close but now so far away.

RICHARD E. MALONE Suffern, N.Y.

Sir: The U.S. taxpayer! Who else? As his numbers decrease, his load increases. With so many of our people living off him --local, state and federal governments, their employees, service personnel, defense project employees, armed services, and useless navy yard personnel--who could object?

JAMES B. McCULLOUGH JR. Philadelphia

Sir: I nominate the people who have had the most significant impact on current events and attitudes. They can be no other than the four girls who were killed by the Birmingham church bombers.

TRENT MILLER St. Louis

Sir: I think that the person who changed the world most was Christine Keeler. She is my nomination for the worst Woman of the Year. She brought the eyes of the world upon England in the famous Profumo scandal. This has given the world an impression about Great Britain--and this impression is not the best!

SHIRLEY CARSON Havre de Grace, Md.

Sir: 1963 will be remembered as the year the President of the U.S. was assassinated. But 1963 will also be remembered as the year of the Negroes' revolt. A profound change in attitude toward racial matters can be felt all over the land. The man who triggered this change: Dr. Martin Luther King.

JOHN SIMONS JR. Los Angeles

Sir: Linus Pauling--for his extremely courageous and successful efforts toward peace and for his decision to conduct a war against disease and suffering.

GEORGE FLICK Cleveland

Sir: The one event of 1963 that seems to offer possibilities of durable hope for all mankind is the achievement of a nuclear test ban treaty. Who deserves better our recognition than he whose tireless and tenacious pursuit of such an end made this epochal agreement possible? Man of the Year--Harold Macmillan.

ROGER C. MORRIS Montpellier, France

Sir: Der Alte, Konrad Adenauer.

RAYMOND C. ANDERSON Fanwood, N.J.

Sir: Based on our extensive editorial experience and astute journalistic judgment, the Trinity Lower School newspaper hereby nominates its candidate: French President Charles de Gaulle.

LEIGH RANDALL SMITH Editor

Trinity Tabloid New York City

Sir: Thruston Morton--his Senate speech [Dec. 6] defending the integrity of our country contrasted sharply with President Johnson's appeal for Americans "to put an end to the teaching and preaching of hate and evil and violence." Morton rightly contends the assassin's "mind had been warped by an alien violence, not by a native condition."

(MRS.) JANET FISCHER Metairie, La.

The Appearance of Intentions

Sir: Your issue of Dec. 20 has me rebuking New Frontiersmen for remaining in Washington to work for President Lyndon Johnson. Nothing could have been further from my intention. My remarks were in the immediate context of urging liberals to get off their tails, work harder, and devote less time to anticipating right-wing criticism. They followed the general text of a yet-to-appear magazine article to which I referred in the speech, and which was written long before President Kennedy's death. No criticism of President Johnson, with whom my relations have long been warm, friendly and admiring, was intended or in the slightest degree implied.

JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH Harvard University Cambridge, Mass.

> Professor Galbraith's intentions seemed quite clear, but apparently not in the way he intended. He said: "To those who feel that they best serve by endowing the scene with their presence rather than by pursuing their convictions, let me simply say that I agree it is a good life. But also a bit like being one of the warriors in the Washington parks. The posture is heroic; the sword is being waved; but, alas, the movement is nil."--ED.

The Archaeologist as a Man

Sir: In these days of massive U.S. Government-supported and -sponsored research, dominated by NASA and the AEC, your fine cover on Nelson Glueck and the panorama of modern archaeology [Dec. 13] demonstrated many oft-forgotten truths! Among them: genius is still the product of an individual brain; pure scientific research may be utterly unrelated to pyramided teamwork or expensive gadgetry; science is by no means restricted to physics, chemistry and biology, in spite of the fact that neither Nobel (science) Prizes nor most of our high school curricula recognize any other fields; much research of the highest kind can be pursued without resort to higher mathematics or computers; leaders of some religions or orders are scientists first, theologians second, harking back to distant times when nearly all scholars wore the cloth.

JOHN B. LUCKE Storrs, Conn.

Sir: As an archaeologist, I appreciate the publicity your cover article gave the field, but as a practicing pollen analyst, I feel obliged to admonish your Science editor for his reference to "fossilized grains of pollen." The connotation of this statement is that pollen grains become petrified with time, as the remains of a fossilized plant or animal, and so are preserved as stone. One of the wonders of biology is that the exterior surface of most types of pollen grains is amazingly resistant to chemical action. For millions of years, pollen which has avoided destruction by becoming buried retains its original organic structure. Palynologists speak of fossil pollen in distinction to modern pollen. Your Science editor has tripped on a neat bit of jargon by substituting fossilized, meaning petrified, for fossil, meaning old.

JAMES SCHOENWETTER Museum of New Mexico Santa Fe, N. Mex.

> Our Webster's says fossilized means "converted into a fossil," which is "any trace of an animal or plant preserved in the earth's crust."--ED.

Three for the Hunt

Sir: Granted hats make news--but shouldn't your Dec. 13 World and People sections have gotten together? Or don't Pepsi-Cola and Vodka mix?

F. BLAKEMORE Tokyo

> Reader Blakemore graciously introduced People's (and Pepsi's) Joan Crawford to World's Khrushchev and Kekkonen with the help of scissors, paste and imagination. See cut.--ED.

Ancient Automation

Sir: As a wife and mother, I'm thrilled with "easy on, easy off" bread wrappers, ecstatic over the tornado in my liquid cleaner and speechless every time the giant jumps out of my washer!

But the Pet Milk Company's "all but automatic" feeding of baby I receive with a toss of my head. We mothers have the automatic line all sewed up and there's no Rip, Pop, Gurgle or Plop involved--just Sit, Cuddle, Nuzzle and Sigh with satisfaction. We call it Nursing.

(MRS.) MARY E. VALENTINE New Hartford, N.Y.

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