A Welcome Break

Sir / Thank you, Howard Hughes [Jan. 24]. You've given us some sprightly thoughts to consider, a welcome break in the tedium of pollution of the mind, the economy, rivers and streams. You've sparked imaginations and given amateur detectives all sorts of outcomes to contemplate. You've staged a war that is far easier to understand than the battles raging in far-off lands, and one much more palatable. Thank you, Howard Hughes, whoever you are.

(MRS.) MARY ANN LEE

Lomita, Calif.

Sir / Will await breathlessly your next chapter in the Hughes mystery. Gosh and golly gee, it's exciting. Maybe after Howard makes his earthshaking appearance back in reality, he'll marry Greta Garbo, and then TIME can really put out a special edition.

RICHARD MCHARG

Destin, Fla.

Sir / The scene was a publicity man's dream: a group of respected reporters and others of the communications media assembled around a loudspeaker waiting to hear a voice emerge. Are they waiting for a statement of profound importance from their President? No. Are they waiting for news that peace has been declared in Viet Nam, or that life has been discovered elsewhere in the solar system? No. They are waiting, ladies and gentlemen, to hear the voice of an elusive old man who has decided to air his irritation and pique at a few s.o.b.s.

ROBERT SPECHT

Malibu, Calif.

Sir / Will the real Mr. Hughes PLEASE stand up!

(MRS.) NOLA LUXFORD DOLBERG

La Canada, Calif.

A Myth and a Rose

Sir / According to your Essay we need new myths [Jan. 17]. Haven't we had enough of myths after all these centuries? What about the truth for a change?

No doubt Mr. Campbell is aware that a rose is a rose, but I fear he will never come close to suspecting why.

SANFORD D. BODGER

Los Angeles

Sir / The latest myth is pro football.

E. ROSS TAYLOR

Dallas

Sir / New myths are being created for one group in our society. Contemporary music has become the mythology of the young.

WILLIAM E. FLEMING

Minneapolis

Sir / With all due respect for Joseph Campbell, how does he expect us mortals to get along on the mythical eclecticism that he offers us? Myths are dramas with roles not only for the hero but for other characters, major and minor, of various ages and both sexes. When a whole society lives by one mythology, well and good. Everyone finds an appropriate part, passes with due ritual through life's phases and carries on. But what if each of us decides to do his own thing, mythically speaking? Suppose the father were play ing Prometheus, the son Buddha, the mother Desdemona, and the daughter Venus Genetrix?

(MRS.) ANNE MARIE CAVIGLIA

Bloomington, Ind.

The Mayflower's New Voyage

Sir / In your Essay on amnesty [Jan. 10] you fail to suggest that those who flee to Canada and elsewhere are merely re-enacting their ancestors' flight on the Mayflower because of religious dissent, or the flights since then because of military and governmental oppression in Europe right up to the age of Hitler and Franco.

BENJAMIN ASHMAN

Madison, Wis.

Sir / I read with incredulity the suggestion that compensatory service for draft evaders should include work in domestic social services. It seems incomprehensible that the draft evaders, a majority of whom are part of or were influenced by the radical and New Left, should be placed in positions where they could propagate their political philosophies.

ROBERT M. GOLDSTEIN

New York City

Stumps in the Field

Sir / We read your story about homesteading in Oklahoma, where prospective farmers will receive ten acres and a chain saw [Jan. 17]. Since we are farmers ourselves, we would like to tell you what would be involved in making a $7,000 profit per family from fruit produced on ten acres.

First, there is lots of work involved in sawing down trees large enough to be used for lumber, but even after they are down, the stumps are still in the field and need to be bulldozed out. The land might need drainage ditching with plastic pipe or clay tile buried in the ground before it would be very productive.

If the fruit crop were strawberries (which could be producing in three years), the hired migrant labor to pick a crop that large would cost the owner several thousand dollars a year. Tree crops such as apples, cherries or peaches take longer than three years to reach the peak of production.

This experiment may give the homesteaders more wholesome surroundings, but they will still be on welfare.

MR. AND MRS. BOB NADLER

Leipsic, Ohio

Tireless Contributor

Sir / We were gratified by TIME'S recent article on the use of Xeroradiography as a tool for the detection of breast cancer [Dec. 27]. Your article did mention the work of Dr. John Wolfe of Hutzel Hospital in Detroit, but we feel it did not give full credit to his pioneering efforts in this field. Without Dr. Wolfe's medical and persuasive efforts, Xerox would not have developed equipment for this purpose. During the past three years he has been a tireless cort.ibutor to making Xeroradiography a practical medical tool. Indeed, within Xerox he is considered the father of Xeroradiography.

GERALD J. MURRAY JR.

Manager, Xeroradiography

Xerox Corp.

Pasadena, Calif.

Corporate Morals

Sir / In your article regarding the attempt of the National Council of Churches to influence the investment procedures of its member denominations according to certain moral and religious criteria [Jan. 17], you quite rightly point out the immense difficulties in evaluating the morals of a corporate entity. Though the point is well taken, it produces, if carried to extremes, complete withdrawal from attempts to influence society. Those who disdain action until they are 100% certain of the "purity" of the cause and the results of their action are those who will watch the suffering and feel satisfied that they had no part in it--or in preventing it.

ROBERT CHASE JR.

Recife, Brazil

Sir / Perhaps the National Council of Churches could achieve a greater degree of moral purity by advising its member denominations to refuse financial contributions from all members who are stockholders or employees of companies that benefit by war profiteering. But not even the N.C.C. wants to be that pure.

ROBERT F. KORBITZ, M.D.

Madison, Wis.

Beauty in the Trunk

Sir / Thank you for John Skow's review of Three Trapped Tigers by G. Cabrera Infante [Jan. 10]. Welcome to the club of "much-impressed norteamericanos." There is so much beauty of prose and poetry and wit in the "Latin trunk."

Many of us who live in Latin America feel like matchmakers, waiting for that fine time when the North and the South will reach an age of awareness and ind a way to communicate. The gringos l love these passionate, eloquent people, and hold close the words from this green continent.

BARBARA HAMANN

Vitoria, Brazil

Nose and Lips

Sir / A fine example of the white man's idea of beauty is clearly outlined in the story about Dyan Cannon [Jan. 17]. The writer said that "the lips are too thick and the nose too flat. Yet somehow all the defective parts work together . . ."

Being a black man, I find nothing defective about thick lips and a flat nose. What I do find defective is the white man's idea that if a woman does not look like those we see in advertisements, she is not beautiful.

ATHEN MCDONALD

East Orange, N.J.

Sir / If Miss Cannon has a nose which is "piglike," then your reporter has the eyes of a bat.

BOB BRUSCATO

Berwyn, Ill.

Cleared for the Thrill

Sir / Please continue to write articles about cross-country skiing [Jan. 17]. Perhaps some of the hot-doggers and/or klutzes will get off the alpine slopes and join the ones cross-countrying, leaving the coast clear for those of us who enjoy the exhilaration of a bit of speed and the thrill of conquering a slope. The two sports really should not be compared.

ANN BLISS

Reseda, Calif.

Sir / What makes these sportsmen believe that cross-country skiing will remain "a different world, with the quietness and stillness" when devotees are doubling in number each year? Aren't these skiers who "break their own trails through any convenient field or forest . . . clambering over fences" another threat to the privacy of both man and beast? Although they do not come equipped for the speed and the sound of snowmobiles, their penchant for disregarding property lines surely places them in the same category as snowmobile aficionados.

(MRS.) PHOEBE J. BECKTELL

Albuquerque

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