Bread and Butterflies

Sir: Your cover story on Mia Farrow and Dustin Hoffman [Feb. 7] was one of the most amusing articles I have read in a long time. I was laughing so hard I nearly choked to death on my English muffins and butterflies.

VIRGINIA HEWEY Taunton, Mass.

Sir: In a period wallowing in the grotesque and in voyeuristic escapism, it follows that Mia Farrow would succeed as a flower-nibbling, pseudo-mystical boy-girl and that Hoffman would see a psychoanalyst five days a week, no doubt to discuss his anxieties about the impending 1040. The sight of Farrow and Dustin salting down the scratch, the former looking like a sand-kicked 97-lb. weakling in Rosemary's Baby and the latter as a watered-down Holden Caulfield in The Graduate, is enough to confirm to this aging mind that when eccentricity and grotesquerie become the prime movers of modern society and grace the cover of society's most powerful conscience, the Flat Earth Society might have something.

JAMES B. ALLEN Ann Arbor, Mich.

Sir: Mr. Sinatra's loss is our gain. I am so glad I am living during this Mia Farrow era. She not only has talent beyond words, but also beauty, intellect, enchantment and charm. Happiness is Mia.

NANCY POWERS Detroit

After the Fact

Sir: Your article "Harpin' Boont in Boonville" [Feb. 7] is an excellent object lesson in the origins of language. Semanticists and some religious scholars like to pretend that language was handed down to us by God, or that the Greeks, Romans or Hebrews had some magical formula for the creation of living language.

But the world's various languages began when enough people in some area were able to agree that certain sounds meant roughly the same thing most of the time. It was never more magical than that. All of the complications of syntax and tense and the diagramming of sentences and the like, which have confused so many of us for so long, spring not from the origins of the language but from the efforts of scholars to figure out after the fact how it works.

The only languages that have been planned and created ahead of time are Esperanto and various imitations of it, and they are really no better at communicating thoughts than Boonville's happy Boont.

EDWARD STEPHENS Evanston, lII

Improving Perfection?

Sir: TIME says "we need well-planned recreational development," as if this applied to Disney Corporation's plans for Mineral King [Feb. 7]. You would ignore the thousands who pilgrimage annually up the winding forest road to find deep enjoyment and escape from urban pressures in simple camping, hiking and horseback riding away from the asphalt wastelands of Southern California. You would "improve" this Shangri-la by callously jamming 81/2 miles of superhighway through a wild section of Sequoia National Park, set aside for posterity in 1890, Then you would transform the tiny mountain valley into a parking lot and Disneyland extravaganza for crowd-loving socialites. This is a great cure for Mineral King's special quiet charm, which had until now miraculously escaped being ruined by "developers." So let us get on with your "well-planned development" and stamp out the last remnants of natural outdoors so they won't plague future generations like they have us.

STEVE ARNO Missoula, Mont.

Pat, Meet Lucy

Sir: "Lemonade Lucy" was the sobriquet applied to Mrs. Rutherford B. Hayes, member of the W.C.T.U., for refusing to serve liquor at White House affairs. Will Mrs. Nixon be dubbed "Punch-Bowl Pat" for serving church-social punch [Feb. 7]?

GEORGE JOHNSON Wausau, Wis.

Question of Interpretation

Sir: While I appreciated the article "Praying Together, Staying Together" [Feb. 7], I was amazed at TIME'S misinterpretation of my inaugural prayer.

TIME says: "He reappeared at Nixon's inauguration to deliver a prayer that sounded more like a sermon--and was not overly kind to his earlier host at the White House." This implies that I was critical of former President Johnson in my prayer. Nothing could be further from the truth. I simply summed up what I have been preaching for 25 years.

I have discussed with former President Johnson many times the overwhelming problems facing America. I would never stoop to using such a platform for partisan criticism--especially of a man whom I admire, respect and love as I do former President Johnson. He most certainly did not interpret my prayer in the way TIME did because when I turned around on the platform and shook his hand, he said: "That was a wonderful prayer. God bless you." When he and his family left the platform, both Lynda and Luci came over and hugged and kissed me.

BILLY GRAHAM Montreal, N.C.

Ad Infmauseam

Sir: Re "Investigations: Catch-68" [Feb. 7]: while loftily castigating the Navy's alleged lack of vision, you barely mention, and then hastily dismiss the real root cause of these latter-day military tragedies--the "flash query syndrome."

As late as World War II, U.S. military officers were authorized to think for themselves (we won that one, remember?). No longer so. Before today's field officer can unsnap his shoddily made but cost-effective holster, he must, by "top level" direction, TWX for approval from a higher echelon commander who, in turn, must query the next higher commander, and so on, ad infinauseam, until somewhere in the bowels of some strategic bastion on the Potomac, the matter is quantitatively weighed for its impact on world opinion, the cost reduction program and next year's political campaign. By this time, of course, the request is moot.

LIEUT. COLONEL WILLIAM J. BUCHANAN

U.S.A.F. A.P.O., Seattle

Oil on Troubled Waters

Sir: Re "Environment: Tragedy in Oil" [Feb. 14]: Never at any time, anywhere, or before the Muskie committee--as the official transcript shows--did I say "I'm amazed at the publicity for the loss of a few birds."

The fact is that on my orders 16 of our top research people were sent to Santa Barbara to establish a bird cleaning and care center, and they have been very successful in their rehabilitation efforts.

In addition, we have assigned marine biologists to study the effects of the oil on sea and bird life and to determine how we might expedite a return to normal balance.

It is almost impossible to say how deeply we regret the accident. Before and since we believe we have acted most responsibly. In view of this situation and these accomplishments, it is most distressing that because I voluntarily and responsibly appeared before a U.S. Senate committee to provide information to assist in possible legislation, that I should be maligned by a grossly incorrect quotation.

FRED L. HARTLEY President

Union Oil Company of California Los Angeles

-- The quote attributed to Mr. Hartley by TIME was widely printed in the American press. What Mr. Hartley said during the congressional hearing was: "I am always tremendously impressed at the publicity that death of birds receives v. the loss of people in our country in this day and age."

Where the Men Are

Sir: Concerning "Demoting the Military" [Feb. 7]: I have been on the academic scene for 55 years. I was 20 years on the receiving end; I have been 35 years on the transmission end. I think I know the picture. I am sure that there are countless courses at Yale and at every other university in the land less deserving of academic credit than is ROTC. With the academic scene what it is and with the prospects so terribly grim, what we need more of is the rigor, the discipline, the demand for performance that the ROTC provides. There is just too much permissiveness --to use a murdered word.

Are any ROTC students engaged in destroying college files, burning college buildings, assaulting teachers and professors? I have been lecturing this week at our U.S.A.F. Academy in Colorado. The academic spirit there is of the first order. There are no boys there. They are all men.

JULIUS SUMNER MILLER Professor of Physics El Camino College Via Torrance, Calif.

Friends Indeed

Sir: Your cover story and particularly the cover picture of "Black vs. Jew: A Tragic Confrontation" [Jan. 31] makes me weep.

In my 40 years in the forefront in the battle against the continual dehumanizing of the Negro, the strongest and warmest friends that rallied to our cause were the Jews. This was so true during the early days, when the "good guys in the big white hats" were standing aloof from those of us (Negroes and Jews) who were fighting this lonely and dangerous battle where the action and the issues were so clear.

I deny and defy Roy Innis' statement that "a black leader would be crazy to publicly repudiate anti-Semitism . . ." Such words are bigotry in the extreme.

RAYMOND PACE ALEXANDER Judge

Court of Common Pleas No. 4 Philadelphia

Till TIME Do Us Part

Sir: Thank you for the lovely coverage of our Sao Paulo Museum of Art [Jan. 31]. Glad as we are to see international recognition of our efforts toward giving our adopted city a museum worthy of its cultural level, my wife and I and our friends were astonished to read that, unbeknown to us, we have been divorced. Lest I be beseeched by a bevy of suitors who will press for Lina Bo's hand, I would be grateful if TIME were to put it on record that after three decades, my wife and I are still very much married to each other.

PIETRO MARIA BARDI Director

Sao Paulo Museum of Art Sao Paulo, Brazil

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