"WHICH party does he belong to?" The whispered question came from Painter Marion Pike as she arrived for the first sitting with Ronald Reagan. It seemed odd that she should ask, in the midst of the heated California political campaign, but so far as the cover was concerned, the answer really did not matter. In selecting the cover subject in any given campaign situation, TIME'S editors consider party affiliation a more or less incidental matter. The decision depends largely on which candidate has introduced a new and interesting element into the political picture. In the 1966 California gubernatorial race, Republican Challenger Reagan fits that pattern; eight years ago the man who did was Democrat Pat Brown, now the defender, who was on our cover (Sept. 15, 1958) during his first campaign for Governor (in which he beat Republican William Knowland).

In another sense, Marion Pike could be excused for a lack of political awareness. Although she is a third-generation Californian, she divides her time between her Los An geles home and a Paris studio, at times painting landscapes, but concentrating mostly on faces. A 5-ft. 2-in. dynamo whose canvases often turn out to be bigger than she is, Artist Pike has a widely established reputation as a portraitist. Her commissions have included paintings of Art Connoisseur Norton Simon and his family, Bob Hope (who owns more than 20 of her works), Washington's National Gallery Director John Walker, Louvre Conservator Magdeleine Hours and Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti.

Marion Pike's impression of Ronald Reagan may strike some people as a bit youthful looking -- like that fellow in the 1940s movies. But since, surprisingly enough, the artist never saw the actor in a movie or on television, she could only paint what she saw in person. Says she: "I think he has a fresh look and a boyish quality."

We are now distributing a new "TIME "publication"--one that relatively few of our readers will see. It is the first of the many teaching aids that we will be sending out during the school year 1966-67 to teachers who have enrolled ten or more of their students in the current TIME Education Program.

The first of the new teaching aids is the TIME Guide to the Exploration of Space. Among others scheduled this season are TIME Guides to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Great Society, the Negro in America, the New Canada, Red China, Economics/ Food/Population, and a Calendar of World Religions. The guides are interspersed with a Cover Collection and monthly news quizzes, including a Vacation Review Quiz, a 100-question Current Affairs Test, and the Year-End Review. All this, of course, is supplementary to TIME itself, now used as a "contemporary textbook" by thousands of teachers in the U.S. and abroad.

U.S. and Canadian teachers who want to know more about our class room service may write the TIME Education Program, Radio City P.O. Box 666, New York, N.Y., 10019. Others may write TIME Education Program, 5 Ottho Heldringstraat, Amsterdam 18, Holland.

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