From One Generation to Another

Sir: While your issue on us "old" people [Aug. 3] may be pertinent to some, it sure does not apply to my group, which is having a wonderful time. Our ages run mostly from 61 to 72; we love dancing and night life and frequent parties with loads of champagne. Some of us golf 18 holes.

Yes, we all dislike the hippie generation. Their repulsive appearance makes me label today the "age of ugliness." But don't let us old people concern you. We are doing fine. And we don't riot either.

RUSSELL G. BECK St.

Petersburg, Fla.

Sir: The paradox that is the American way of life never ceases to amaze me. First you spend millions of dollars to find more and better ways to increase the productivity of the land, and then spend millions finding ways to get rid of the surplus and paying farmers not to plant anything. Now as a person involved with health, I am flabbergasted to learn that the nation that spends the most on research directed toward fighting disease, and that boasts one of the longest life expectancies in the world, should pay such little attention to the aged benefactors of that research.

JOSe L. GARCiA, D.D.S.

Mexico City

Sir:Congratulations to all who had a head, a hand and a heart in producing TIME'S superb cover story on the aged in America. It set the problems, the challenges, the opportunities, the encouragements and the discouragements that face this 10% of our population in crystal-clear perspective.

As a member of this 10%, I feel that perhaps the best advice ever given to us was expressed by famed Baseball Pitcher Satchel Paige when he said. "Never look back--someone may be gaining on you." WILLIAM S. HOWLAND Little Deer Isle, Me.

Sir: What a pity the Western culture is unlike the Oriental. The Chinese, who have for centuries held their elders in the highest esteem, have words regarding their aged: The house with an old grandparent harbors a jewel.

(MRS.) ANGELA WONG

Inglewood, Calif.

Sir: I used to resent the fact that because I was born in 1946, the year DDT was put into general use, my life expectancy may be shortened by more than a decade because of pesticide accumulation in my body.

But now, faced with the prospect of growing old in a society where the lines of experience inspire revulsion rather than respect in the young; where I see oldsters struggling to exist on inflated dollars they saved for a carefree retirement; where I see the blank and hopeless faces of wheel-chaired rows of idle pensioners in a nursing home; where I see old men fishing for carp at the city sewage outfall (the fish gather there to eat) because they can afford no other source of protein, early death by slow poison seems a delightful relief by comparison.

(MRS.) LINDA BETS

Des Moines

Sir: The obsolescence of the elderly in our society is illustrated by the fact that in America the suicide rate rises with age. The suicide rate for elderly males is five times the national average. The reason given by the elderly for wanting to kill themselves is, typically, a desire to escape from a world that has become unpleasant and painful.

We will be able to judge the extent of our success in helping the elderly live meaningful lives by watching this index of their misery.

DAVID LESTER

Director of Research

Suicide-Prevention and

Crisis Service, Inc.

Buffalo

Sir: Is our 86-year-old mother the only one growing old who still dives into the lake for her daily swim? She isn't part of "the unwanted generation."

LEWIS and JACK PROBASCO

Williams Bay, Wis.

Sir: My thanks to Ruth Brine and to TIME for having the courage and compassion to expose and explore such a desolate and critical corner of our society.

CANDICE BERGEN

Almeria, Spain

Sir: In your collection of quotes accompanying the article on old age, you might have included this one from another of Albee's plays, The American Dream:

"When you get old, you can't talk to people because people snap at you. When you get so old, people talk to you that way. That's why you become deaf, so you won't be able to hear people talking to you that way. And that's why you go and hide under the covers in the big soft bed, so you won't feel the house shaking from people talking to you that way. That's why old people die, eventually."

MOOEY MEAD

Littleton, Colo.

Basics Ignored

Sir: Mr. Glenn Kimble thinks that man "won't suffer a hell of a lot if the whooping crane does not make it" [Aug. 3].

In an earlier TIME article on ecology, my once-hero Barry Commoner opined that we erred in feeding fish to cats when "we don't even eat the cats." Both men ignore the two basics: creatures are of value for themselves, not just for man. And man, too, suffers when he loses the beauty of wild creatures or the companionship of pets. We feed fish to Mr. Commoner and we don't eat him either.

(MRS.) RITA ATKINS

MountCarroll, III.

Sir: Glenn Kimble's remark about whooping cranes is applicable to Michelangelo's Piet`a also. Both are great works of art --unique, irreplaceable.

TOM TOYAMA

Prosser, Wash.

Sir: If clean air and water are part of a Communist conspiracy, maybe we could use more Communism, since capitalism is fast making the air unbreathable and water undrinkable. If the D.A.R.'s ancestors could hear them talking such rubbish, they'd kick their dowdy, flowered behinds.

GAEL GIBNEY

Elgin, III.

Sir: Are we so very dim-witted and narrow in America today that we can let only one issue occupy our minds at any one time? Isn't our policy of defoliating

Asian forests just as harmful as our apathy in cleaning up our environment here? Aren't the so-called urban blight, the housing non-conditions, the racial disorders and poverty in America just as murderous as the war in Viet Nam? Come on! It's time we stopped throwing each issue around like a fad, soon leaving it in favor of another.

RUTH MARQUARDT

Oneonta, N.Y.

Interpreting the Interpretation

Sir: Re "Interpreting the Young" [Aug. 3], I am a youth interpreting the memorandum of Dr. Heard and Dr. Cheek to the President. The memo implies that the President alone spoke in Knoxville and that afterwards students were arrested for "disrupting a religious service." It fails to mention that Mr. Nixon made only brief remarks during a crusade meeting at the invitation of Dr. Billy Graham. Nor dors the memo concede that later Mr. Nixon sent a telegram to Leonard Rogers, mayor of Knoxville, asking him to deal leniently with the demonstrators. Numerous disruptions of the President's and others' remarks were noted, among them a jeering chant during a prayer. TIME'S printing of the memo without qualifying statements perpetrates a half-truth.

MRS. SAM VENABLE JR.

Knoxville, Tenn.

Making it Crystal Clear

Sir: The impression one could receive from reading your material relating to the FBI investigation of the student disorders and killings at Kent State University [Aug. 3] is that the FBI has drawn certain precise conclusions relative to the guilt or nonguilt of the persons involved. In order that the record in this highly controversial matter may be kept crystal clear, I would like to state without equivocation that the FBI has drawn no conclusions of any kind in this matter. Further, it has long been the policy of this bureau not to draw conclusions in any case investigated by us.

J. EDGAR HOOVER

Director, FBI

Washington, D.C.

Shades of Red

Sir: Shades of Eric the Red and his son Leif! Where did you get the notion that Keflavik airport in Iceland is jointly operated by the U.S. and Denmark [Aug. 3]?

There have never been Danes at Keflavik since the airport was built after the Icelandic government declared independence from Danish protection in 1944. The airport is jointly operated by Iceland and the U.S. Perhaps you were thinking of Greenland, which was colonized by Icelanders in the 10th and 11th centuries and which is now administered by the Danish. From Greenland, of course, the Icelanders went even farther west to discover a place they called Vinland, but that's another story altogether.

OTTAR INDRIDASON

Richmond, Vt.

Like Mother, Like Daughter

Sir: Princess Anne's ill humor with our lady reporters [Aug. 3] reminds me of a delightful story about her mother and grandmother. The Queen took Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret to a ship launching. When Princess Elizabeth started to enter a "no admittance" area, a guard spoke up and said, "I'm sorry, little lady, but you must not enter." The princess stomped her foot and replied, "I'm not a little lady! I am the Princess Elizabeth."

The serene and lovely Queen smiled at the guard and said, "She's right, you know, she is not a little lady. But she will learn."

HARRIET B. MOORE

Laguna Hills, Calif.

On the Avenue

Sir: I abhor the Madison Avenue organization's attempt to enhance the respectability of irrational opposition to the President's policies for peace [July 27].

The employment of mass media techniques in alliance with antiwar groups is not only disrespectful but also despicable because it is a further source of inspiration and comfort to the enemy. The unpalatable product of these Madison Avenue presentations will be, in fact, protracted conflict for all of Southeast Asia.

DONALD W. BARTLETT

El Paso

Sir: If the TV networks consider this type of advertising "a fresh source of income," they are far more corrupt than Spiro Agnew ever intimated. These commercials are dirty, slanted, political tactics used by unscrupulous people to undermine the progress President Nixon has made toward ending the war in Indochina.

(MRS.) RUTH ANN JOHNSON

Wisconsin Rapids, Wis.

Ten into Two

Sir: Your story on video cartridges [Aug. 10] called me a "philosopher of the future," and quoted me as predicting the decline of textbooks. Now the printed word has struck back.

That article talks about my leaving NBC to form a company that meshes computer retrieval, CATTY and the cartridge, and that I call this the "ultimate 20th century combination." But the final words here are "and [Klein] optimistically predicts that it could reach the market in ten years." I would have to be crazy to be going into business this week to reach that market in ten years. The system is capable of its potential today, and I believe it will be a reality in two years.

PAUL L. KLEIN

Vice President

Audience Measurement

National Broadcasting Co., Inc.

Manhattan

Breakfast for the Birds

Sir: Since Mr. Choate's blast at cereals [Aug. 3], I have been using the last of this "junk" in my bird feeder with remarkable effect. Three blue jays eating Cheerios have gotten "go power" on my porch, a squirrel became a wino on fermented Grape Nuts, and a woodpecker eating Sugar Crisps lost his red head and became Republican.

RICHARD H. COWARD

Battle Creek, Mich.

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