The Lively Subculture

Sir: Your cover story on today's youth [Jan. 29] was perceptive and compassionate. Our frenzied dance rituals, our pathetically selective cliques, our sodden and sadistic heroes, and our self-assured sex talk are a startling invective on the past and a desperate cry for help in the present. What we need is not increased material and worldly goods, but an increased awareness of and communication with one another. It seems to me that many modern parents have failed in their responsibility to inculcate worthwhile values in us.

ARNOLD L. LETTIERI JR.

Fairfield, Conn.

Sir: For three years we've been asking ourselves why our parents exiled us to a creepy convent boarding school to become ladies. After reading your article on teenage life throughout the country, we realize that we've found the answer.

EGAN VAUGHN

GERTRUDE RENDIN

Convent of the Sacred Heart

Overbrook, Pa.

Sir: Jamie Kelso's "eyeball test" for determining college admissions ought to be adopted by all colleges. It certainly beats anything I've encountered, and I think I speak for most of the weary interviewing, form-filing, biography-writing, reference-gathering youth who have applied for college.

WILLIAM A. FISCHEL

Amherst College

Amherst, Mass.

Sir: It may be true that we are on the "fringe of a golden era in education," but is it really worth it if the people produced during such an era are like the pseudo-intellectual morons that you interviewed--such as the jerk who wants to make a more meaningful person out of his mother.

THOMAS GILLMAN

Notre Dame, Ind.

Sir: There is nothing wrong with our teen-agers that they won't outgrow as they get older.

RICHARD J. MACGARVA

Manitowoc, Wis.

Sir: The 2,100 pupils and staff of Palisades High School resent your gross misrepresentation, innuendos and half-truths against the character of its school. Palisades High School is justly proud of its fine tradition of school spirit, its nationally recognized scholastic achievement, its record of school and community service and its athletic successes.

HERBERT L. AIGNER

Principal

Palisades High School

Santa Monica, Calif.

Indeed it is, largely because of the questioning, articulate students described by TIME.

Sir: To concentrate on California teenagers is to distort the true picture. Southern California is, as everyone knows, the catchall for the rejects, materialists and rootless pleasure seekers. Naturally our faults would be grossly magnified there. Most teen-agers are interested in much more. True, we have little respect for authority, but that is because authority has failed to earn our respect. Since the adult world, in its headlong worship of money, has failed to give us worthwhile goals, we have to establish our own.

RAY MILLER

Skokie, Ill.

Sir: Andy Warhol's cover illustration portrays the antics of monkeys in a sideshow. One might infer that today's teenagers make a joke of the responsibility inherent in their premature sophistication.

D. R. HUNNEMAN III

New Haven, Conn.

Sir: You state that Andy Warhol worked in a 5 and 10-c- store. That, sir, explains everything. But I wonder where those people worked who buy his stuff.

CARL W. BROEMEL

Sharon, Conn.

Sir: Your Andy Warhol cover is evocative and refreshing. The squares, unfortunately, won't pay attention to how he's manipulated his patterns, and thus will miss the rhythm and wit.

R. C. JONES

New York City

Former Naval Person

Sir: Your article on Sir Winston [Jan. 29] was most appropriate. I can't help wondering what might have been if the father of this great man had been American and his mother English. In all likelihood he would have ascended to the presidency. Britain needed him for its finest hour, that I won't dispute. In any event, it was our good fortune that he lived during our time. The thought of "President" Churchill, however, still fascinates me.

TIMOTHY B. NORBECK

Milwaukee

Sir: With the passing of Sir Winston, we have the first gap in our Great Society.

JEREMIAH DENNEHY

San Francisco

Sir: The magnitude of his presence is now replaced with the profundity of his omnipresence.

REGINA R. PATTERSON

New York City

Sir: In 1943, when he received the Mark Twain Gold Medal, Sir Winston Churchill wrote me: "It will serve to keep fresh my memory of a great American, who showed me much kindness when I visited New York as a young man by taking the chair at my first public lecture and by autographing copies of his works, which still form a valued part of my library."

CYRIL CLEMENS

Mark Twain

Journal Kirkwood, Ill.

Ceremonies & Sniffles

Sir: Re the Most Reverend Johnson's Inauguration speech [Jan. 29]: at long last, a lay Pope.

JIM TOOLE

Bethesda, Md.

Sir: L.B.J. has no "style"? Indeed he has, but it is a style either unrecognized or despised by a wide cross section of American liberals: that of the small-town Protestant worthy. Before jumping to the conclusion that therefore he is not big enough for the job. the scoffers should recall that Lincoln was called a "baboon" by Punch.

GEORGE GRUNEMILLER

New York City

Sir: If Johnson's rate of articulation is any indication of how fast the Great Society will come upon us, Lord help us.

ANDREA BUCZAK

New Brunswick, N.J.

Sir: Re L.B.J.'s unsurpassed precautions against assassination, I can imagine your democratic comments had it been Franco instead of L.B.J. inside that fish bowl.

EDUARDO Y. ECHEVARRIA

Madrid

Sir: Can anyone imagine a more sincere dedication to the Great Society than a President who had the foresight to become hospitalized when the stock markets were closed for the weekend?

EDWIN A. BOGER

Storrs, Conn.

Sir: How could the man who is responsible for our safety refuse to wear a hat and coat to the inauguration? Is this what he means by "mastery over nature"?

(MRS.) FLORENCE S. CAPEN

Norristown, Pa.

Sir: Your cough-by-cough description of the royal (presidential) family's colds was so realistic that I picked up a germ from reading it.

DONALD H. ADAMS

Delaware. Ohio

Sir: One shudders to think of the gory details to which we might be subjected if the President should contract athlete's foot or. heaven forbid, the seven-year itch.

S. R. BOLICK

Cranford, N.J.

The Senator & Southeast Asia

Sir: Senator Fulbright [Jan. 22] was right about Egypt's Aswan Dam, he was right about the Bay of Pigs, he was right about the Congo, and his views about Viet Nam seem to be most realistic. He certainly is a great Senator, with great political insight and human compassion.

NABITH A. AMMARI

Chicago

Sir: You properly hedge on the soundness of Fulbright's bridges-to-Commu-nism formula with the reminder that everyone may not agree with him as to "the facts we must look in the face." When Chamberlain returned from Munich to deliver to cheering Britons his "peace in our time" formula, he no doubt believed he was looking facts in the face. He may even have devoted the next day to lecturing Churchill on "myths and realities"! HENRY MAYERS Los Angeles

Sir: My brother is in Viet Nam along with 34,999 other brothers, sons and husbands. It is a disgrace that we are compelled to continue acting as the savior of the world at the expense of so many lives.

STEPHANIE PETEILAK

Madison, Wis.

Sir: Your dismissal of the deaths of 358 American men as a "tolerable" cost of the Viet Nam war displays a gross lack of human emotion. The death of each serviceman represents the ultimate tragedy and the payment of an inestimable price.

STANLEY B. STEIN

Toronto

Sir: No doubt many readers will be indignantly critical of your callous judgment that U.S. casualties in Viet Nam are "tolerable." I do not belittle the personal tragedy that each of these casualties surely means, but I think collectively they are far more tolerable than the 40,000 traffic deaths per year in the U.S., the 20,000 suicides, the 9,500 homicides, or the thousands of deaths from acute alcoholism.

WALDEN P. PRATT

Arvada, Colo.

Painting Behind the Painting

Sir: You might be interested in the story behind the artist who originally painted the picture of the President's birthplace that the Kurds copied for the background of their Man of the Year cover [Jan. 1]. My mother, Etta Mae Humphreys, painted Johnson's birthplace last year, and after she presented her painting to the President in Washington, he wrote her that it was "a marvelous piece of work. You have captured a piece of my early years that mean a great deal to me." The President also owns her paintings of the LBJ Ranch and his boyhood home in Johnson City. I am very proud of her.

MRS. LOUIS HERRIN

Carrollton, Texas

Aryan, Not Arab

Sir: Please accept my thanks for what TIME had to say about the regrettable photo-montage in Cologne's Stadt-Anzeiger [Jan. 22]. It was an excellent exposition of Cartoonist Harald Sattler's way of trying to be funny at the expense of our Shahanshah. However, TIME called the Shah an "Arab husband." But as the world knows, the Shah of Iran is neither an Arab nor does he act like an Arab husband.

A. M.SHAPURIAN

Iranian Embassy

Washington, B.C.

The Right to Be Deaf

Sir: Most deaf persons do not consider their deafness a handicap [Jan. 29]. It is true that some deaf persons do not really want to learn to speak, but would you try to teach a dog to meow? We deaf consider sign language our own "tongue," speak only out of necessity to get along with the hearing world. People like Dr. Perdoncini are infringing on our rights when they try to force this "foreign language"--speech--on us.

ROBERT A. GEESEY

Bryn Mawr, Pa.

Lotus Eaters

Sir: Your article on San Diego [Jan. 22] is greatly appreciated--for its accurate estimate of problems as well as its kudos for successes. Fortunately, we have many natural assets upon which to base our home-grown version of the Great Society. Your perceptive reporting gives us renewed vigor.

HAROLD C. MCLEAN

Urban Renewal Commission

San Diego

Sir: Ah so, ah so! We humble lotus eaters from San Diego thank you for telling the world about our paradise on earth. The reason no smog sullies our air: no industry. Now, thanks to your exaggerated article, more people will move in and we'll have more unemployment. The reason why we eat fruit of the lotus tree: we have no jobs and can't afford groceries. If all you prospective San Diegans can learn to digest sand and salt water, come on out and see us sometime.

(MRS.) MARCELLA E. BUCKLEY

San Diego

Pot & Kettle?

Sir: White Lotus, by John Hersey [Jan. 29], is apparently well below the average competency of this excellent writer, and I won't argue. But I must smile with amusement at your concern with his exotic words. What magazine in all the world has delved so successfully for all these years into the esoteric reaches of Webster? TIME, oh TIME!

WM. F. SCHANEN JR.

Ozaukee Press

Port Washington, Wis.

Kennedyana

Sir: Re Mr. Malcolm Muggeridge and the books of "syrupy insincerity" about John F. Kennedy [Jan. 29], he should be assured that a host of perceptive people in the U.S. long ago considered most of the Kennedyana in just that way. Kennedy's own book Profiles in Courage will become recognized as J.F.K.'s most impressive and lasting printed memorial. The succeeding tons of treacle indeed display less love of the man than love of money.

CHARLES H. BIGELOW St. Paul

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.