Man of the Year

Sir:

The entire free world must concur with your inevitable choice at year's end of John F. Kennedy as TIME'S Man of the Year.

E. F. HARVIE

Wellington, New Zealand

Sir:

For Man of the Year--your choice of Johns: President or Pope.

JOHN M. GEHL III

New Orleans

Sir:

I nominate James Meredith, of course; for a difficult, thankless, but necessary task, accomplished with consummate dignity and inspiring courage.

(MRS.) LOIS D. DUMMETT

Tuskegee, Ala.

Sir:

John Glenn.

SUSAN O'BRIEN

New York City

Sir:

The American serviceman--the soldier, sailor, marine, or airman who has stood ready in countless spots around the world from the paddyfields of Viet Nam to the blue waters of the Caribbean to serve his country, and meanwhile acts with warmth and friendship as its most effective ambassador of people-to-people diplomacy.

R. C. GROSSE

Lieutenant, U.S.N.

F.P.O., New York

Folk Singing

Sir:

Thank you, TIME, for a long-anticipated cover story about Joan Baez and folk singing [Nov. 23].

JOANNE A. MIRRA

Boston

Sir:

I hardly know whether to applaud you for your wit, groan over your unscholarly and superficial analyses, or praise you for your occasional (I say occasional) insight into the ideological conflicts and underlying bases for the widespread folk-music interest today.

The thoughtful critic of folk music, unlike the pseudobeatnik "Harvard underworld" you describe so well, criticizes the commercially oriented "folk" group or individual not on the basis of money, but on the basis of a sincere approach to the spirit and tradition of the songs being sung, which, surprisingly to many, is an extremely complex and difficult achievement. A good voice is incidental to the attainment of this goal, though it doesn't hurt. One might criticize Bing Crosby's style of singing opera even if he were to hit all the notes properly.

If nothing else, in spite of some gross oversimplifications this is a thoughtfully provocative article.

DICK REUSS

Indiana University

Bloomington, Ind.

Sir:

Joan Baez is professionally lost, unilaterally unhappy to the point that her life might be a void were she ever--perish the thought! --to find happiness. She is a believer without a faith.

The folk singer who sings in public is a self-conscious fraud who needs to be scorned, hated and pointed out. He needs to feel that he is as unwanted as he feels he is. Nothing shall come of nothing.

J. MICHAEL FREEDBERG

Salem, Mass.

Sir:

Your article on folk singing was very interesting, but I want Miss Baez to know that there is at least one good Republican who is also a good folk singer--my wife Mary.

JOHN C. OWEN

Baltimore

Sir:

You committed the unpardonable sin of dismissing Richard Dyer-Bennet in one sentence as an "arty eclectic." The likes of Joan Baez could not even hold his guitar.

DAVID S. BAUMGARTNER

Chagrin Falls, Ohio

Sir:

How can you write an article on this subject without at least mentioning Josh White?

ARTHUR ZEIKEL

New York City

Sir:

That was the only folk-account I ever read that was fair to everybody--even the Kingston Trio.

Except you left out the New Christy Minstrels, the newest thing in folk music: the sing-along folk group.

JUDY MOLL

Sausalito, Calif.

Sir:

When I was a student at Columbia University in 1941, I had the good fortune to hear the Louisiana ex-convict Leadbelly sing at a private party.

The most unique performance came when he laid down his twelve-string guitar and did what he called "hollers," primitive, soul-searching melancholy songs.

BURKE McGiNTY Terrell, Texas

Sir:

I am extremely thrilled that you printed my song in your folk singing article. I love music and Joan Baez.

Copper Kettle was written in 1953 as part of my opera Go Lightly Stranger.

A. F. BEDDOE

Staten Island, N.Y.

Sir:

Your fleeting reference to bluegrass music cries out for amplification. Bluegrass is not a "polite synonym for hillbilly." It is a highly intricate derivative of the folk and jazz idioms. Both the term and the music itself received their major impetus from Bill Monroe and His Bluegrass Boys. A bluegrass musician is an accomplished and versatile soloist who is capable of achieving a very delicate balance between story and music. Only stringed instruments are used, and these are nonelectrified and unamplified (as opposed to hillbilly music).

BILL CLIFTON

Charlottesville, Va.

Sir:

Folk music strikes a responsive chord in people because it reflects life in basic human terms and with powerful, poetic truth. Even its war songs, both anti-war and battle sagas, are expressed in poignant, personal terms.

Long after the popular fad of commercial treatment of folk songs for profit has died, the songs will continue to live and flourish.

RITA WEILL

Los Angeles

Nixon & Hiss

Sir:

In my opinion, your harsh treatment of ABC Newsman Howard K. Smith was most unfair [Nov. 23]. Not only do you add your dubious voice to the critics of his controversial program, but you disparage Mr. Smith's entire television effort.

Of all public affairs programs presented, Mr. Smith's is the most valuable, most topical, and most thoughtprovoking.

JOHN R. WILLIAMS

Washington, D.C.

Sir:

Nixon was serving his country when he brought out evidence against Hiss. It is contemptible to permit someone like Hiss, who was serving another country against all of our interests, to utter his thoughts about our former public servant.

(MRS.) LAURA BAILEY

Pittstown, N.J.

Sir:

I am glad to see that ABC has taken the great step forward and is giving the TV audience a chance to hear the opinions of great world figures.

But why stop there? Why not produce an historical dramatization with a similar format? Then we could all hear John Wilkes Booth talk on Lincoln, Adolf Hitler talk on Churchill, and Al Capone talk on Ness.

ROBERT BROOK JR.

Trenton, N.J.

The Penance Corps

Sir:

I spent three weeks this summer working on Kibbutz Mishmar David, one of the ten kibbutzim that would accept German work groups [Nov. 23]. The Germans seemed less concerned with doing penance than with getting to know Jews. As one explained to me, "You know, there are very few Jews in Germany."

The results of this experiment suggest that the barriers to Israeli-German friendship are high but not insurmountable. The group that came in 1961--"the cream of Cologne youth," as one kibbutznik put it--was a fabulous success. A year later the Israelis were still praising their friendliness, their talent and hard work.

This summer's group, less special, fared less well. The Israelis could never explain precisely what was going wrong; several people said they were just more aware of these students' "German-ness." Perhaps occasional carelessness or tactlessness was partly to blame; I never got over hearing the Germans sing, before an Israeli audience, Let My People Go.

SUSAN J. SEGAL

Radcliffe College

Cambridge, Mass.

Renoir by Picasso

Sir:

Accompanying your review of Renoir, My Father, by Jean Renoir [Nov. 9], was a photograph of the painter made late in life.

It is doubly interesting. The artist's hands are badly twisted by rheumatism, but as your review points out, Renoir persisted in painting and, despite this handicap, produced some of his most significant work in his last years. It was this same photograph that Picasso used as a model for his drawing of Renoir.

VAN DEREN COKE

Director

University of New Mexico Art Gallery

Albuquerque

The Brothers K.

Sir:

Your story about the Kadoorie brothers [Nov. 16] has a special meaning to me. It was Horace Kadoorie who, in the early '40s, built and supported a school in Shanghai for refugee children from Nazi Germany. Shanghai was Japanese-occupied during the war, and the Kadoorie school, as it was known affectionately to some 20,000 European refugees, was the only free schooling available to the youngsters. Even after the Japanese confiscated Kadoorie's marble palace, one of Shanghai's showplace residences, his Rolls-Royce, Buick and Chevy, he continued to visit the school by bicycle.

After the war, many of these youngsters continued their education in America, and are living today scattered from coast to coast. Very few of us have kept in touch, but perhaps your story might help us locate our former schoolmates.

CLAUDE E. SPINGARN

Rochester

Sir:

I spent long months in Chapei internment camp with Lawrence Kadoorie and his wife.

After the Japanese surrender, my wife and I moved our few grey rags, our emaciated selves and sick baby to the Kadoorie home in Shanghai as their guests.

In the upheaval of the times, Horace Kadoorie managed to get not only the medicines our little daughter needed but enough food to feed many hundreds of visiting flight crews and soldiers, both U.S. and British.

Marble Hall became famed for its hospitality and kindness.

ERIC J. SCHMIDT

San Francisco

Dartmouth & Harvard

Sir:

TIME'S interesting article on Dartmouth [Nov. 23] states that Dartmouth's two-year medical school "sends most of its students on to fill the vacancies created by flunk-outs at Harvard's four-year school."

Flunk-outs at the Harvard Medical School are extremely rare: only 14 during the past 14 years--substantially less than 1% per year. Harvard's extensive hospital facilities for clinical teaching during the last two years of medical study make it possible to accept a large number of qualified students from the nation's two-year medical schools. We are pleased that Dartmouth's students elect to apply in large numbers to the Harvard Medical School for opportunities to complete their medical education.

GEORGE P. BERRY, M.D.

Dean

The Faculty of Medicine

Harvard University

Boston

Central Heating & England

Sir:

Re your article on the customary lack of heat in British homes [Nov. 16]:

I just must put down my hot-water bottle long enough to thank you for backing up my stories to the folks back home. Last winter I did my cooking in a parka and snow boots. Our English friends find me quite spineless.

The closest I have come to bedtime glamour in England is to dye my long Johns passionate purple.

HELEN BAUMAN

Cheltenham, England

Sir:

Your always apropos articles seemed even more so this morning as I stepped out in the 39DEG weather to collect the milk and returned to my 45DEG kitchen to prepare breakfast.

Being a Texan, I find our two-year-old modern home in Great Britain not very much so, but in defiance I still hop between the icy sheets in my Neiman-Marcus sheer nighties. (MRS.) NANCY BECKNER Swansea, Wales

Sir:

No, no, no. We British do not put our toast in racks to "cool it off fast." Why, some of our toast racks even have a heating unit underneath to keep the toast hot. We put our toast in racks to let the steam out and thus keep it crisp.

The much-loved American breakfast toast --limp and soggy--we find rather repellent. BETTY L. GARDNER Halifax, N.S.

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