Lennon's Legacy

To the Editors:

John Lennon and his music [Dec. 22] were like a great parade--gaudy yet sweet, outrageous yet poignant, raunchy yet delicate. And, like all parades, it passed by too quickly.

Mary A. Sarno

Philadelphia

The music didn't die. Only the man did.

Moira Ryan

Hoboken, N.J.

The painting of John Lennon by Dan Maffia depicts him as I saw him: a bit arrogant, confident, but forever young.

Frances R. Boyd

Rockford, Ill.

Does no one have the guts to call John Lennon what he was: a media-wise, existentialist Pied Piper who helped lead countless kids down the rocky rathole of drugs, rebellion and purposelessness?

Vern Boerman

South Holland, Ill.

As a teen-ager in 1964, I contracted "Beatlemania," a condition that appears to be permanent. The Beatles meant good music and good clean fun. I'm glad I had them instead of some of the other diversions of the teen years.

Camille Emig

Edwardsville, Ill.

The Handgun Menace

I have solidified my long-held conviction that the only purpose for a handgun [Dec. 22] is to kill human beings. Hunters do not hunt with handguns. Armies do not war with handguns.

James B. Patterson

Novato, Calif.

I am a hunter and a member of the National Rifle Association, and I believe there is no doubt that a chief culprit of violent crimes in America is the easy availability of cheap handguns.

But the advocates of handgun control have made no effort to convince American hunters that they have nothing to fear from the passage of federal legislation designed to curb the spread of handguns. Until such assurances are forthcoming, efforts to limit the availability of handguns will continue to be unsuccessful, and the threat posed by the armed criminal will continue to hang over all of us.

Bobby D. Burnett

Munday, Texas

The liberals are crying gun control. The conservatives are crying capital punishment. Me, I'm just crying.

Gale Quatannens

Purdys, N. Y.

Curing the Blah-Blah-Blahs

A fervent amen to Frank Trippett's Essay, "Time to Reflect on Blah-Blah-Blah" [Dec. 22]. Being an avid baseball fan, I find it excruciating to have to listen to the patter of a sports announcer who seems to choose the most awkward time of the game to give out with a rush of statistics that go back 20 years or so.

Walter J. McGuire

Mesilla, N. Mex.

It took Frank Trippett 1,240 words to tell everyone else they talk too much.

Bob Meals

Peoria, III.

Double Standard

Having read about the controversy over the nomination of General Alexander Haig for Secretary of State [Dec. 22] and the qualms about the man's integrity, I am astonished at the double standard involved. Where were those critical voices when he was appointed Supreme Commander of NATO? A man good enough for this post ought to be good enough for Secretary of State.

Nils Persson

Copenhagen

Murder in El Salvador

Where is the outcry over the brutal murder of four American citizens in El Salvador [Dec. 15]? Is this less of a crime than the holding of American hostages in Iran? Even if El Salvador's military was not directly involved this time, the country does not deserve our support.

Everett Ward

Grantsville, Utah

The prospect of a Reagan Administration's supporting the blatantly repressive governments of Central America on the sole merit of being anti-Communist makes me very depressed. While I don't particularly like Communism, the opposite extreme can be as bad. My brother, who was working with the Indian people in Guatemala, was murdered last October after being kidnaped in broad daylight by persons who, there is good reason to believe, are members of the Guatemala security forces. I applaud Ambassador White's efforts in El Salvador.

Claudia Stoscheck

Van Etten, N. Y.

Stalwart Spectator

I would like to draw your attention to one error in your excellent article [Dec. 15] on conservative and neoconservative opinion magazines: the circulation of the American Spectator is not 22,500 but over 31,000. According to a recent article in the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, the American Spectator is the only opinion magazine of "any ideological inclination that is increasing its circulation."

Ronald E. Burr

Publisher, the American Spectator

Bloomington, Ind.

Agrarians Reconsidered

Congratulations to Melvin Maddocks for his fine American Scene on the Agrarian writers [Dec. 8]. However, I do not agree that Robert Penn Warren is the South's answer to Robert Frost. Never. Warren is the more demanding poet, and for that reason will never enjoy Frost's popularity. While the landscape of Kentucky remains central to much of Warren's best poetry, the Agrarian movement was only one stage in his art.

William F. Neal

Tannersville, Va.

Your paean to the Agrarians is a reminder of just how willfully blind Southern intellectuals were and are. Of all the Southern writers, only the greatest of them, William Faulkner, had the courage to examine the true paradox of the South--the julep-sipping Southern gentleman who bought and sold human beings. The Agrarians ignored the dominant fact of their history: that their "New World Eden" fed upon an evil far greater than the industrialization they lament.

Alicia Rasley

Indianapolis

Ellis Island Revisited

Re your piece on the hopes and fears of new arrivals at Ellis Island [Dec. 15]: Ten years ago, along with my Belgian family, I entered this great country as an immigrant aboard a Boeing 707 jet; we debarked safely at New York's J.F.K. International Airport, no questions asked. America, I love you.

Marcel G. Gustin

Portland, Ore.

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