High Cost

Sir: Mr. Fairchild [Sept. 14] has put fashion into Nowheresville. While the mini may have seemed to some "not enough," the midi is "too much." What we have in between appears to be no man's land.

It is a sad commentary on the fashion industry that an egotist like Mr. Fairchild could cost so many so much.

NETTA FELDMAN Elizabeth, N.J.

Sir: Any "liberated" female who discards her bra as a rejection of male subjugation, and dons a midi regardless of the obvious manipulation by the fashion industry, doesn't know who is giving her support and who is putting her down.

PHILIP W. ZINKE Manhattan

Sir: What you seemed to miss is that for the individual, fashion should be FUN! In variety and change there is that fun. As for the midi, let's hope it helps to bring back those qualities so sadly lacking from the recent sartorial scene: grace, elegance and good taste.

(MRS.) BARBARA PIXLEY WHITE Los Angeles

Sir: I had never heard of Mr. Fairchild before, but I can assure you he is right for Europe if not for the States, and the midi fashion will be a success. The American women perhaps are not self-confident enough to buy midi clothes?

CLAIRE LHEROT Geneva

Sir: What a monster of smug, smirking, fatuous arrogance! May he be stripped to his shorts and forced to run the gauntlet down Seventh Avenue, pelted with eggs and tomatoes by mobs of jeering Women's Liberationists!

CAMILLE A. PAGLIA New Haven, Conn.

Sir: Do you mean to tell me that in 1970, the year of a resurgent Women's Liberation movement, a man, John Fairchild, can actually decree that women will wear frumpy clothes in 1971? At least the Longuette is egalitarian; all women, not just the ones with bad legs, look funny in it.

MURPHY A. SEVVALL St. Louis

Sir: I have just finished reading your cover story on John Fairchild, and would like to say that I think your reporters did a superlative job in describing the correct mixture of fear and respect that most of us within the industry have for Fairchild Press.

The best way for me to describe my feeling about John's organization would be to tell you that if President Roosevelt had appointed me instead of Bill Donovan to set up OSS back in 1941, the first thing I would have done would be to draft the entire Women's Wear organization as the nucleus of my intelligence-gathering section.

FRANKLIN M. JARMAN Chairman, GENESCO Nashville

Wasted Discussions

Sir: All these discussions about how to eliminate the hijacking of airliners are a waste of money and time [Sept. 21]. There is one simple solution--the creation of a Palestinian state that would include both Jews and Arabs, and the removal of the racist Zionist state!

RUTH LIVERMAN Rockville, Md.

Sir: When will you realize that the Arab world is getting away with murder? When will you realize that despite the efforts of Israel to make peace in the Middle East, the Arab countries will not make peace until Israel is completely annihilated?

MIKE KLAYMAN Hillside, N.J.

Sir: If the U.S. would announce that one Phantom Jet would be sent to Israel for every day that hostages are held, Palestinian Arabs would stop hijacking planes.

DR. NORMAN FREDMAN Flushing, N.Y.

Supreme Effort

Sir: The tribute to Vince Lombardi [Sept. 14] was excellent. His coaching, personal philosophy and, above all, his ability to extract the supreme effort from his teams will long endure as a standard.

JON BOND Denver

Sir: There was nothing "pure schmalz" about the intellect of the late Vince Lombardi. An academic background in which he achieved the highest distinction carried over to football and was the hallmark of his coaching success.

May I suggest that your statement, "Lombardi's fundamentalist brand of football has all but died with him," could not be farther from the truth.

Furthermore, the multiple offense and the headily revolving defense, as used by the Kansas Chiefs, are not the new mode of the '70s, but the mode prior to the '60s.

Your last testimonial to a great coach was otherwise an excellent article.

EARL ("RED") BLAIK Palm Desert, Calif.

A No-No

Sir: Confident that TIME, the "professional" newsmagazine, would not knowingly indulge in "nono" journalism, I should like to call to your attention the following facts: 1) There were no "false" claims in my income-tax returns [Sept. 7]; 2) I was not "caught," as the returns disclosed the transactions; 3) the figure of $445,000 is grossly exaggerated, as TIME would have found out, had TIME taken the time to read the 86-page legal opinion of the tax court; and 4) finally, as you should know, there were many others in the entertainment world who, like myself, did not attempt to understand complicated business transactions but relied on poor advice from their financial advisers and made the same kind of unfortunate investments. Earlier court decisions contain a roster of others who were similarly taken. I hope this will enable you to set the record straight.

DORIS DAY Beverly Hills

A Look at a Picture

Sir: If white America and white police in particular want an answer to blacks' hatred and militancy, they only have to look at the picture of the Philadelphia police forcing black men to strip stark naked on a public street [Sept. 14], the most debasing example of man's inhumanity to man I have ever seen.

ROY L. KIRKSEY Rockford, Ill.

Sir: TIME has the gall and audacity to "analyze" the deaths of policemen. I call it COLD-BLOODED MURDER. It is time something drastic was done.

MRS. J. WALKER COLEMAN III Charleston, S.C.

Sir: When four students were shot last spring, the country rose in outrage. Now cops are gunned down every day and the public remains overtly unconcerned. I could not understand this until I remembered all the shakedowns on phony charges, the insults and the numerous speed traps to which I have been subjected by policemen all over our nation. The cops are now reaping their reward for decades of abuse against innocent, legitimate citizens.

This may explain the current apathy, but let's face it, citizens, the police are now in trouble and need our support. Let's help them.

DONALD A. WINDSOR Norwich, N.Y.

Marengo Has More

Sir: Although the article on "Animal Polluters" [Sept. 14] was informative and well written, it cast a very poor image of Marengo, Ill. As a native of this Midwestern Utopia, may I inform you that Marengo is famous not for manure control but rather as the home of one of the nation's two mousetrap factories, a large apiary and a thriving mushroom farm. In short, Marengo is more than a lot of B.S.

PHIL WESSON Marengo, Ill.

>And birthplace of the composer of In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree, Egbert Van Ahtyne.

A Sad Song

Sir: As a truck driver, I was interested in your article, "A Song of the Open Road, 1970" [Sept. 14]. I will make it a point never to stop at the Dixie Truckers Home at McLean, Ill, because of the remarks made about truckers by Mr. John Geske. The $18,000 to $20,000 a year figure is more or less correct, but here is what it takes to earn that kind of money. A trucker is away from home sometimes for weeks, often driving trucks that are furnaces in summer and freezing in winter. A good percentage of truck drivers have chronic stomach trouble and other health problems due to the existence they have to lead. Contrary to popular opinion, most truck-stop food is not very good. Truck driving is a physical hazard. Many men die on the highways every year.

The only way they can make this so-called truckers' big money is to put in many more hours than the average 8-to-5 worker.

NORMAN BLAIR San Leandro, Calif.

Sir: The song of the road for truckers has become a terrifying wail to the motorist, as the former "knights of the road" cut off other vehicles, fail to yield the right of way, exceed even passenger-car speed limits and generally add to the hazards of expressway driving.

JOSEPH T. GARDNER Euclid, Ohio

Sourdough

Sir: I regard as unfortunate your slanted presentation of the facts regarding our research grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to study the microorganisms involved in the fermentation of sourdough bread [Aug. 31].

For nearly two decades, my colleagues and I have, with limited funds, conducted problem-solving and fundamental studies on the bacteria used in the manufacture of various foods. Special attention has been given to the lactic-acid bacteria, a group of organisms that have been useful to man for thousands of years in preserving foods by natural fermentation.

The fermentation industry has benefited from this work; and our present study of sourdough lactic-acid bacteria, solicited not by us but by the USDA, is designed to assist the baking industry.

WILLIAM E. SANDINE Professor, Department of Microbiology Oregon State University Corvallis, Ore.

Big Buddha

Sir: Your article, "The New Jess Unruh" [Sept. 14], was the first I'd heard that one of my cartoons was responsible for driving the California gubernatorial candidate to diet. ("After a political cartoon pictured him as a fat Buddha . . .")

It was drawn back in '63, and I've been sorry ever since. The new lean and hungry look makes for lousy caricature.

Lou GRANT Oakland Tribune L.A. Times Syndicate Oakland, Calif.

Give Me Five Minutes More

Sir: Why quote a man if your restrictions of space must damage his idea? I refer to your piece about me in PEOPLE [Sept. 14]. I talked for five minutes in complex fashion about Women's Liberation. You pulled three unrelated sentences out of it. The ladies deserve to take over journalism.

NORMAN MAILER Brooklyn

Painful Find

Sir: Tony Smith [Sept. 14] did a sculpture, Asteriskos, that was purchased for the San Antonio HemisFair '68 by Mr. and Mrs. Catto.

Recently it was discovered on a city junk pile, with "part of the bottom converted into a refrigerator." Mrs. Catto told embarrassed officials that the city had been given the statue to be a source of pleasure, not pain, and the Cattos would pay the necessary $6,000 to have it restored.

CHARLES S. CLARK Houston

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