Costly Lunch

To the Editors:

No government could afford to feed students the lunch on the cover [Oct. 12]. Fresh lettuce and tomato on a thick hamburger on a toasted bun on a shiny china plate on a tray devoid of graffiti simply do not exist in a school cafeteria.

George Landau Clayton, Mo.

Your title "No Free Lunch" for the story on slashing benefits implies that there was once a lunch that was actually free and that the Administration's attempt to establish fiscal sanity is taking it away. It is this kind of faulty reasoning that has brought us to the current financial chaos.

Ed Doran Dallas

Imagine, a nation that wants to be regarded as strong and advanced is too chintzy to provide an adequate daily meal for schoolchildren to assure their nutritional wellbeing.

David Owen Princeton, III.

Mr. Stockman should use a slide rule to reconcile the elimination of lunch subsidies with the tax reduction. Basic math could illustrate that the tax cut due a $15,000 wage earner is far outdistanced by the cost of lunch for his two children at $1 per day each, for 180 days. Unless the school board, the food service manager and I can learn more imaginative ways to sling hash, "biting the bullet" may end up on the school menus.

Wayne L. Threlkeld

Superintendent of Schools

Hopatcong, N.J.

The answer is a guaranteed minimum family income. Just think how much could be saved by ending the administrative bureaucracy and cheating.

Robert H. Kuster San Francisco

While writing about entitlements and federally subsidized food, TIME should have mentioned the low-cost meals available to members of Congress in the congressional dining halls.

Mary Francis Pfrommer Baltimore

Reagan's Riches

Hugh Sidey compares Reagan's wealth with that of other Presidents [Oct. 12], but the comparison is irrelevant. Other millionaire Presidents did not spend their time taking from the indigent. The case against Reagan is that he advocates a double standard by demanding more for the rich and less for the poor.

Gordon M. Monroe Houston

Re the White House china, it should be noted that an American company, Lenox, in constant competition with fine china manufacturers overseas, received a hefty order, thereby helping the economy. Further, critics who decry the tax deductions do not acknowledge that private individuals were paying to decorate the White House. The excused tax portion was going directly to a good cause without the usual mishandling.

Ethel Jensen Palmerton, Pa.

Streetwise Baby

As an ex-schoolteacher in Bedford Stuyvesant, I can fully attest to the many other troubled teen-agers like Baby Love in that area [Oct. 12]. The saddest part is that the kids aren't aware of another way of life. They simply do not have a choice.

Brian A. Hill Clearwater, Fla.

I read "A Wolf in Sneakers" with fascination and mixed feelings. It is depressing that this way of life involving drugs, stealing and wasted youth exists. It is also outrageous that taxpayers' dollars go, via welfare, to support the people who are perpetuating such an existence.

Cheryl Kohr-Lahey Chicago

There are many "white folks" completely removed from the ghetto scene who might infer that the story of Baby Love depicts a typical inner-city black youth. Baby Love represents only an extreme example of what the area is capable of producing. This article does great injustice to the majority of black and Hispanic youngsters who are simply good kids, doing their best to succeed in a world in which the cards are stacked against them. Richard Bobrick Paterson, N.J.

All my moral training and education tell me I should feel compassion for youngsters like "poor little Curtis." However, after having been stabbed, beaten and robbed by one of those uncontrollable children, I am out of sympathy.

Erica C. Rhodes Oakland, Calif.

Prescribing Pharmacists

Maybe a pharmacist would do no harm in suggesting to a patient what to take for a cold, a cough, a pain or an ache [Oct 12]. But then, who knows what the cold is? What is behind the cough, and what causes the pain? If a clinical pharmacist can treat the patient just as an internist would, why not train a butcher in clinical skills and let him practice medicine as a surgeon does?

James Y. Fuh, M.D. Medical College of Wisconsin Milwaukee

As a registered nurse working in an emergency room, I often need accurate and rapid information. I know I can count on the in-house pharmacist to be on top of an ever changing profession.

Dexter M. Buccili Hurley, N. Y.

Mad or Bad

Common sense indicates that a defense based on a plea of insanity should not allow a defendant to be set free after he is "cured" [Oct. 12]. He should serve at least the minimum sentence. Insanity, if proved, should be viewed as a mitigating factor, not as a grant of immunity.

Robert N. Conley Columbus

Taming Traffic

I find it amusing to think that Boston's Appleton Street, referred to in your story "Trying to Tame the Automobile [Oct. 12] can be subdued by speeds of 5 to 10 m.p.h. and that drivers will mind their manners. Boston drivers have been out of control for years. They are a national disgrace, and no measure short of mass arrest will ever make Appleton or any other Boston street safe.

Terence D. O'Kelly Belmont, Mass.

In a region famous for its devotion to the automobile, Pasadena residents have searched for traffic relief in their historic neighborhood for eight years. Residential traffic management will not work. Woonerf concept of channeling automobile movement is a positive and encouraging step. "

Lucy Howell

Pasadena, Calif.

There are two networks of travel in Venice: canals for boats and walkways for pedestrians. The latter, although less famous, pulse with action. It is time that Americans find the equivalent for our spread-out, automobile-dependent cities. We must recognize and accept the distinction between road and street.

Joseph Davis Chapel Hill, N.C.

Friedan's New Feminism

What disturbs me most about Betty Friedan's new book [Oct. 12] is her simplistic approach to complex topics, particularly feminism's view of the family as well as the relationship between men and women. Women have always struggled to combine their urge to excel with their desire to nurture and be nurtured. It encompasses those who call themselves feminists and those who do not. Women do not want to be told to reconcile these needs. They want to be told how.

Holly Peters Knoxville, Tenn.

It's good to hear a voice at the leading edge of the women's movement rein in the excessive rhetoric of the dogmatic extremists. Man-hating feminists have done more harm to the movement than a thousand Phyllis Schlaflys. The radical element has alienated the moderate supporters of both sexes who do not want to be identified with those whose principal motivations are bitterness and hatred.

Alex Kline Boulder, Colo.

Thanks to Friedan for The Feminine Mystique and her courageous leadership, but no thanks for her recent statements lending credence to the simplistic belief that feminists have disparaged family and homemaker. I heard the expression "just a housewife" long before I ever heard of the women's movement.

Dolores Klein Peoria, III.

Into Jargon

J.D. Reed's review of my novel Reinhart's Women [Oct. 12], being utterly favorable, is of course a model of good taste. But when, in the subsequent biographical notes, I am quoted as having said, "I am so into cooking that...," I must protest. I do not speak or write (except as parody) in the dreadful jargon in which "into" is lazily substituted for "interested in" or "involved in" or "dedicated to" or "fascinated by," any more than I should say "relationship" to mean a connection between a man and a woman, or "lifestyle" with reference to a way of life. Please permit me to correct the record, lest I be despised by my students at Yale--all of whom, incidentally, write in a language of commendable purity.

Thomas Berger Palisades, N. Y

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