What a Gal!

To the Editors:

Hurrah for Marabel Morgan [March 14]! What a gal! Her concerns, beliefs and fresh, wholesome image are a welcome relief from the hardcore, ego-stomping, stern-looking, rebellious feminists and their so-called movement--who want, as you could guess, to be just like what they despise--men.

David De Vries Waterloo, Iowa

Total Woman, Total Joy, Total Garbage.

Lois Bookman Campbell, Calif.

Marabel Morgan is not "fighting the housewife blues." She is helping to create them.

Michael Zischke Hanover, N.H.

Any woman who feels she must costume herself like a French poodle to bring out the "hound" in her husband deserves to be sent to the kennels.

Valerie Oltarsh Lisa Kildahl Madison, Wis.

It is not women who need to be told that being a housewife is a worthy occupation, but men. It is very convenient for people to blame feminism for the low status housewives have and feel, but the phrase "just a housewife" was not invented by women's liberation--it has been in use for a long time. Many men want their wives to stay home and then resent them for doing so.

Gale K. Stolz Chicago

I must say as a 15-year-old feminist who prefers to live in the 20th century rather than in Mrs. Morgan's medieval era. I find her Total Woman-Total Joy concept more dangerous to my liberty than either the Soviet Union or Communist China.

Noel Wiggins Lubbock, Texas

Between Gloria and Marabel, they've got us coming and going. I have a single plea to both of them: Leave me the hell alone!

Barbie Rohrbach Farmington, Conn.

After another long, depressing day as a secretary, my spirits were lifted by reading your article on the Total Woman. I am no longer embarrassed that my goal in life is to be a wife and mother, rather than pound a typewriter or even be an executive. But I am also grateful to the women's liberation movement for allowing me the chance to choose.

(Mrs.) Sheila Browning Hopkinton, Mass.

I hate to see Marabel Morgan's real message to married women lost in a dispute over her style (or lack of it). What she is really saying is, be creative. If something seems to be lacking in ourselves or in our lives then find ways of dealing with the situation. Nagging our husbands or griping is not the answer.

Margery W. Bartz Dousman, Wis.

Well, here we go again with another round of that alltime favorite American game of "don't do as I do--do as I say." In this case we have a woman (Marabel Morgan) telling other women how to be happy with a housewife's career, while she is out making a cool $1.5 million plus on the lecture circuit as a writer of popular literature.

Carol A. Fenton Laurel, Md.

Seduction under the dining room table with a lighted candle on the floor promotes only one thing: a fire hazard.

Beth Scott River Falls, Wis.

Congress Gets a Raise

We elected our Congressmen thinking they might curb inflation, and what did they do? They gave a great boost to inflation by voting an unreasonable increase in their wages [March 14]. Since they would not stand up and be counted, the solution is to vote all of them out of office at the next election.

R.P. Wellborn Lyndon, Kans.

Fringe benefits for members of Congress are just high-class welfare.

Peggy Sense Crestview Hills, Ky.

Until 1911, members of Great Britain's Parliament got no salary at all. It was merely expected that those members would use their office to gain whatever profit they could. Such a method of payment is now considered unethical if not scandalous. If America wants a Government free from patronage. America will have to pay for it.

Jeffrey B. Lang New York City

Abortion and Murder

"Viewing Life Before Birth" [March 14] should put an end once and for all to the longstanding controversy over abortion. After looking at those awe-inspiring photos of human embryos, who dares to draw the legal hairline between plain termination of pregnancy and premeditated murder?

Juhan Kangur Bridgeton, N.J.

Until I read your article. I had favored abortion on demand. But that doomed fetus was alive at nine weeks! This requires a close re-examination of the whole abortion debate. Perhaps greater access to safe methods of birth control is a more ethical alternative.

Caroline McEwan Kingston, Ont.

What a pity to have been given a brief glimpse into the private world of this most perfect and beautiful creature, only to know that he will be aborted before he gets to see ours.

Karen L. Kier Island Heights, N.J.

Scary Math

In "Math Mystique: Fear of Figuring" [March 14], you state that "nobody knows for sure why math arouses so much anxiety." Well, after twelve years of public school math, I can tell you why. Few things in life are so uncompromising as math. One error, no matter how minor, means a wrong answer. It is scary to deal with a subject that always demands perfection.

Steve Hall Canton, Ohio

All my teachers back in Nebraska must have failed somewhere. I made it all the way to graduate school in applied mathematics and statistics without once having an anxiety attack. Perhaps, in the spirit of equal rights, educators should look beyond women with math problems and examine the entire "modern math" generation. They will probably find that Johnny can't add either.

Denise Roeder Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

Paradox

I was astonished to read in the review of Konrad Lorenz: A Biography [March 14]: "Nor does Nisbett discuss Lorenz's now regretted papers that appeared, in the early 1940s, to support Nazi race theories." This is followed by the implication that I skipped that episode to avoid offending a man who "is not only alive but perfectly capable of raising quite a ruckus."

Your reviewer seems to have completely overlooked Chapter 6, which is wholly devoted to a discussion of those papers. The bibliography comments on them further, and the subject is referred to again on some nine other pages throughout the book. I lived through the Nazi period and will not forget it. And yet . . . the paradox of Lorenz is that he does inspire admiration not only in his followers but also in many who disagree with him. The book reflects the highlights, but sets them against their own shadows.

As the reviewer more kindly says, "The facts are all here." He would like me to pull them together and reach his conclusion. But that is not my purpose: I leave each reader to draw his own.

Alec Nisbett London

TIME's reviewer did not overlook the pages on Lorenz's wartime papers, but he believes that Author Nisbett's discussion of them is inadequate.

On Doing One's Job

The politicians do their job badly, the philosophers timidly and the educators inexcusably. The bankers manage one-mindedly, while guided by the economists, myopically. The legal profession commits criminally, and the medical industry does it hypocritically and archaically, with mediocrity and cutlery. Writers and painters and other artists do their work sloppily, and theologians unpardonably.

Out of which of these sacred cows then crawled the perpetrator of the article criticizing the custodians of technology [March 7], the only ones who do their job halfway properly?

Harry Peter Robert Mexico City

Giving Up Mary

TIME's Essay on the Mary Tyler Moore Show [March 14] observed perceptively that MTM has "almost Kuklapolitan charm." One evening at home not long ago, we watched MTM with Burr Tillstrom, creator of the Kuklapolitans. Burr told us that the show gave him the same feeling as Kukla, Fran and Ollie. Perhaps that is why we have all kept a standing Saturday-night date with Mary for the past seven years.

How sad that not one but two loving programs are no more than sweet memory. We miss both of them.

Jo and Newt Minow Chicago

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