The Magical Glass of Chartres

Sir:

I am . . . profoundly happy over the color photographs of the windows of Chartres in TIME'S Christmas number . . .

I have been going to Chartres ... for many years. I knew M. Houvet, the curator, and I know his color reproductions well. Indeed, I think I must know almost all the really good pictures that have ever been made in color of the Chartres windows . . . Mr. Johnson's photographs are, of course, the best color reproductions of the Chartres glass in existence. But it has remained for the editorial direction of TIME to bring the incomparable beauty and interest of this glass into the actual experience of hundreds of thousands of Americans through these color prints, whose perfection is unique and, to repeat, almost unbelievable. The whole country must be grateful to you . . .

KATHERINE WOODS New York City

Sir:

Congratulations to you on your wonderful cover. It was certainly in the true spirit of Christmas . . .

(FATHER) JAMES KELLER New York City

Scots, Who Whey . . .

Sir:

Re your Dec. 24 article, "Piping the Milk": That rumbling sound is my Scottish ancestors turning over in their graves at the inference that Highland bagpipes are "milkcurdling." Our baby daughter Linda learned to pat the plump tartan bag on my bagpipes long before she went from mother's milk. CAPT. CHESTER A. MACNEILL JR. Champion Bagpiper of Oregon Portland, Ore.

Sir:

. . . Let the maternal milk of lesser races be curdled. From Scottish lactation--enriched, enraptured and enkindled by the noble strains of the pipes--have sprung Bruce, Wallace, Burns and all the lengthy line of heroes, inventors, writers, settlers, engineers and surgeons who are only part of Scotland's glory.

I shall have the honor, sir, to meet you with drawn claymore, sir, behind the auld kirk at dawn. To paraphrase the Scottish national motto, Nemo me impune lactessit.

JOHN HENDERSON Niagara Falls, N.Y.

P: The original motto of Scotland's Order of the Thistle is: Nemo me impune lacessit (No man provokes me with impunity). Rough translation of Reader Henderson's paraphrase: "No one may milk me without paying the piper."--ED.

Miss Bankhead Objects

Sir:

With characteristic bad taste, TIME (Dec. 24) compounds and inflates all the vicious innuendo of defense counsel under the heading "Trial by Stage Whisper" [a report of the trial of Tallulah Bankhead's ex-maid, for kiting checks]. Said TIME: "The defense attorney had complained bitterly that there were 'two trials going on in this courtroom.' " Since TIME brazenly endorsed that fiction it should have added . . . that it was conducting a third trial, with me as its target.

In stating that "theatergoers who watched fully expected her (Bankhead) to pull a small, pearl-handled revolver from her handbag and . . . shoot both counsel and defendant" and "if it (a judicial system) didn't put her on the stand, it was probably in imminent danger of an attack with a screwdriver, too," TIME'S writer hit a new high in vilification, made the efforts of defense counsel sound like the drooling of the veriest novice.

I was the complainant, not the defendant, which will come as a great surprise to the unfortunates who have been gulled into the belief that TIME prints news . . .

TALLULAH BANKHEAD New York City

P:TIME, reporting the news of an unusual trial, tried to make it plain that Actress Bankhead was able to rise above the dull limitations of the law, and dominate the scene with a characteristically dramatic performance. Miss Bankhead apparently mistook TIME'S awed applause for a Bronx cheer.--ED.

Sir:

I'm sorry Tallulah Bankhead received so much unjust publicity in fighting a would-be blackmailer. She has done what any other citizen should do ...

(S/Sgt.) CHARLES W. HUGHES Travis A.F.B., Calif.

How to Clean Telescopes, etc.

Sir:

I was delighted to read your Dec. 24 article on Johns Hopkins' Robert Williams Wood. It gives me the opportunity to air a slight but persistent gripe concerning, of all things, the current Ethyl gasoline advertisements carried by some pretty estimable magazines: "There's a big difference between holly and a polly," etc. This is a direct steal from Professor Wood's charming (and far cleverer) . . . The Antelope--The Cantelope:

If you will tap the Cantelope

reposing on the ground

It will not move, but just emit

a melon-choly sound.

But if you try this method on

the antlered antelope,

His departure will convince you

that he is a misanthrope.

By the way, I hope the anecdote about Professor Wood's cleaning out a telescope is not apocryphal. His method: send through a white cat . . .

(MRS.) LOUISE M. HIEATT Stamford, Conn.

Where Is Hollywood?

Sir:

It burns me up to constantly read in national papers and magazines every time a movie star gets into trouble, that it was in Hollywood. The Wanger-Lang shooting happened in Beverly Hills, which is a separate city from Hollywood ... It hurts to see every reporter use Hollywood as the location for any sordid happening . . .

ROBERT H. ATWELL Hollywood

Sir:

. . . Hollywood is no small town by any means. It is the headquarters of an industry which has brought about the greatest change in the field of entertainment since the time of chariot racing . . .

STEVE SMITH Hollywood

Sir:

. . . Let us all protest Hollywood's attempt to portray itself as merely a reproduction of "Main Street anywhere." This, if nothing else, should incur the mass uprising of every Main Street everywhere to press charges of slander against the most powerful nest of veneer-covered, mental-garbage-disposal-dump ever invented by mankind.

R. SWAIN Los Angeles

Manhattan Dollar

Sir:

Your Dec. 17 account of the proposal of the name shake for a unit of time equal to one-hundredth microsecond was interesting, but tended to leave the impression that such minute intervals are a very recent phenomenon in physics . . . During the war, in order to avoid using the somewhat revealing word "microsecond" in telephone conversations, it was dubbed the "dollar" in one section of the Manhattan project, so that what is now a shake became a "penny." The "jiffy" has been used for one ten-thousandth of a shake and probably for other short intervals.

The shortest time that physicists are likely to mention nowadays is a ten-thousandth of a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a second (i.e., 10 23 sec.), which is about the time it takes a photon (corpuscle of light) to traverse the diameter of an atomic nucleus, but there seems little prospect of ever being able to measure it.

The term millimicrosecond is in common use to denote one-tenth of a shake, but a more picturesque name was suggested by Dr. J. W. Keuffel (then a student at CalTech). Since this is very nearly the time taken by light to travel twelve inches, he proposed that it be called the "lightfoot" by analogy with the common astronomical unit, the "light-year"--which is, of course, a measure of distance and not of time.

CONWAY W. SNYDER

Senior Physicist

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Oak Ridge, Tenn.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.