Monk's Bag

Sir: An exciting portrait of Master Jazzman Thelonious Monk [Feb. 28]. Mr. Monk deserves more than a narrow cult of followers. Although his musical explorations are personal and uncompromising, their emotional appeal is broad and basic. Anyone witnessing a performance by his group will realize that Monk's dramatic "stage presence" is vital to the dignity, humor and discipline of his music.

E. T. SHINEMAN Cornell University Ithaca, N.Y.

Sir: Even though we are aware of Mr. Monk's music, and his daughter attends our boarding school, we didn't have too much knowledge of his long musical career. This article has enlightened us in many areas. We are extremely happy to have him in "our bag."

SAMUEL B. Ross JR. Headmaster Green Chimneys School Brewster, N.Y.

Sir: Your cover story about Thelonious Monk reaffirmed my faith in TIME'S wide scope of news coverage. As an aspiring young Negro artist raised in a ghetto, and a member of the Negro blues school, I understand the forces that shape the Monk-type personality. The authenticity of your article proved that TIME was at home in Monk's bag.

PAT PANNELL New York City

Munich Revisited

Sir: At last somebody has given the recognition long overdue to Munich [Feb. 28]. Your magnificently illustrated article on Germany's gateway to the south has succeeded in making me homesick, something that seven years of living abroad failed to do.

Munich has without a doubt the greatest zest for living and letting live of any city in the world. I know of no visitor to this paradise on the Isar who has not left a portion of his psyche "am Stachus."

WILLIAM T. FEE Warren, Ohio

Sir: For years I have been trying to describe my home town, Munich, adequately to my friends. You did it for me.

KAROLA KELLER Rochester, N.Y.

The Right to Die?

Sir: Judge J. Skelly Wright [Feb. 21] erred in authorizing a blood transfusion for Mrs. James L. Jones.

In addition to the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, man also has the right to die. Mrs. Jones was denied that right.

ROBERT N. MCCLELLAN Westwood, Mass.

Sir: Judge Wright's order regarding the blood transfusion that saved the reluctant patient's life indicates his clear-cut and courageous thinking. A society has the right to prevent its citizens from committing suicide, whether that suicide takes the form of handling rattlesnakes in a religious ceremony, barbecuing oneself with gasoline, or refusing to accept medical care on the threshold of death.

GEORGE M. LEPPERT New Orleans

The Right to Judge

Sir: Re Judge Johnson of Alabama [Feb. 21]: enough has been said of the irresponsible leaders of the South who would appease a screaming minority of white racists simply to further their own political ambitions. It is time the national press expended more energy in extolling the virtues of men born and bred in the South who have a decent and abiding respect for the law of the land. Surely there must be more men whose voices are rendered inaudible by extremists.

CALHOUN WELLING Washington, D.C.

The Right to Compensation?

Sir: Apparently Justice Arthur Goldberg [Feb. 21] wants to effect a quick redistribution of wealth by "Government compensation of victims of crime." What with muggings, hijackings, embezzlements, armed robbery, waterfront pilfering, and so on ad nauseam, this would cost the taxpayers tens of billions a year.

In addition to this, he would like to add a few billions to law-enforcement costs by doing away with bail, thereby making necessary a huge additional force to round up criminals for trial.

CARL W. NUISSL West Roxbury, Mass.

Whittier Weather

Sir: The Port of Whittier [Feb. 21], with its excellent facilities, adverse weather, close proximity to Anchorage and the possible low price of $800,000, seems to me to be a ready-made nerve center for Arctic exploration. The National Science Foundation should certainly investigate this possibility.

WES JACKSON Kansas Wesleyan University Salina, Kans.

Sir: A project that cost us taxpayers $55 million and is now unused and on the market for $800,000. And Johnson is turning off the White House lights yet!

RUDY VALLEE New York City

Sir: You exaggerated the Whittier weather picture, as does almost everyone. The snowfall of 70 ft. in one winter is believed by many to have been mostly drifted snow blown off nearby Whittier glacier. Average snowfall is more nearly 240 in., much of which is melted by following rains.

LIVINGSTON LANSING Boonville, N.Y.

Fading Fossil

Sir: In your Feb. 21 issue you devoted more than a whole page to the Smithsonian Institution with the very obvious omission of its outgoing director, Dr. Leonard Carmichael, who should have something to do with your detailed account of the evolution of the "old mildewed fossil" to what it is today.

PORTIA SHEEN Kowloon, Hong Kong

Sir: I went out of my way this past summer to see the Smithsonian, only to become quickly disenchanted with the collections of rocks, model boats, bones and other trivia.

I hope the new director tears into his new job and dissects away the junk.

WILLIAM GREENE JR. Gainesville, Fla.

Sir: You have coupled the Fort McHenry flag with such Smithsonian "mildew" as General Sheridan's horse or a human-finger necklace. You fail to mention the fact that the most prominent single exhibit in the new Museum of History and Technology is the Fort McHenry flag which stimulated Francis S. Key to the composition of what became the national anthem.

CURTIS CARROLL DAVIS Directorate Star-Spangled Banner Flag House Association Baltimore

Affluent Communists

Sir: It was interesting to learn from your cover story about the Soviet President [Feb. 21] that Leonid Brezhnev is a Ukrainian like Khrushchev. This may predispose them to feel more "European" than was the case with the preceding Red rulers, since Lenin was a Tartar, Trotsky was Jewish, and Stalin came from the Caucasus.

Moreover, Khrushchev is the first Red czar to have been a laborer, a manual worker. Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin were intellectuals. Thus the two Ukrainians have a state of mind fundamentally different from Stalin's and Lenin's--less doctrinaire, more grassroots.

WALTER J. SIGWALD New York City

Sir: Having read about the sorrowful state of agriculture in Russia, I think that two knotty problems of this civilized world could be solved if only Russia would swap departments of agriculture with the U.S.

DON PETRACEK Belview, Minn.

Sir: The big reason "affluent Communists would certainly have more to live for" is the giveaway of Western capitalist products such as wheat to feed the otherwise inevitably collapsible Russian Communist system.

JANICE ATKINS Kennewick, Wash.

Sir: While employed in the U.S.S.R. in 1932, I found that the delivery of milk in Moscow was strictly a personal affair. From countless small farms around the city, the peasant women boarded the trains carrying large cans of milk on their backs. The housewife purchased the milk on a street corner and carried it in her own pitcher to the breakfast table of her family. Today they seem to have advanced: milk is transported on hand carts and delivered in bottles.

MELVIN M. ROTSCH Bryan, Texas

Formicating Hills

Sir: The myth in the article on Beverly Hills [Feb. 21] is your referring to our community as a suburb. In actuality we are a separately incorporated and independent city with a beautiful, single-family residential area uncompromised by faulty zoning that would allow the encroachment of multiple-housing developments or high buildings. These esthetics are not a matter of status but of pride of ownership, as evidenced by the employment by homeowners of 950 gardeners to maintain lawns and shrubbery, not to mention 68 city employees assigned to maintain parkways and trees.

GLENN A. IRVIN Assistant Manager Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce Beverly Hills, Calif.

Sir: You hit the diamond-studded nail on its mortgaged platinum head. But you fail to mention its worthiest asset--the Beverly Hills Unified School District. It's one of the finest in the country.

MARTIN DIBNER Beverly Hills, Calif.

> As TIME has said. Sec TIME, July 19: "As Private As Public Can Be."--ED.

Sir: Although there are no cemeteries in Beverly Hills for our "no visibly poor" citizens, the majority of our residents are nonetheless buried in mortgages up to oar fur-lined tail fins.

DONALD BAKER Beverly Hills, Calif.

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