Closing the Generation Gap

Sir: Cheers for TIME and its Man of the Year [Jan. 6]--an honor long overdue! Since the generation gap is being widened daily by headlines confined to hoods, young criminals and rioting, it is refreshing and encouraging to be shown the whole picture.

MRS. CARLTON E. WOOD Long Beach, Calif.

Sir: I felt a special surge of pride when I read your story and could identify with those you wrote about.

Many weeks go by when we feel as though there is no place for us in the adult world. This article helped to give us the identity for which we search, though sometimes fail to find.

MARGARET HIRSHFELD, '70 Smith College Northampton, Mass.

Sir: As a college sophomore and member of the younger generation, I thank you for realizing that not all of us spend all our time parading on Sunset Strip, on the Berkeley campus, or at protest meetings.

Some of us do attend classes. Some of us do support the President's action in Viet Nam. Some of us don't wear miniskirts or jump suits to a formal affair. Some of us haven't been in a wreck on the L.A. freeway. Some of us are human.

ROXANN PLOSS George Washington University Washington, D.C.

Sir: Thanks for casting light on the bearable, if not entirely acceptable, character of a generation that has been ridiculed and grossed out for more than a decade.

PAUL ROBERT HALLOCK University of Massachusetts Amherst

Sir: The Now People belong to one of our best generations. They sometimes puzzle me, occasionally annoy me, always interest, intrigue, delight and awe me.

ELIZABETH O. DORNEY North Tonawanda, N.Y.

Sir: Thank you for an excellent story. Having three members of this generation in our home, teaching two classes a day, and performing the duties of dean of women, I am in constant contact with young people. I am always impressed and amazed; I have great faith and tremendous hope for us because of them. There are moments when I wish I were 20 years younger, but quickly shift my feelings to gratitude for being alive in this, their time. I wouldn't want to miss one minute.

B. MARGARET VOSS Davenport College of Business Grand Rapids, Mich.

Sir: Let the young Man of the Year wear his hair long enough to drag the ground. Let the girls wear rough workman's clothing and boots. Let them express themselves with the skull-cracking noises they call music. We of the Beaten Generation can endure all that, but in the end we expect them to make a better world.

HASTINGS W. BAKER Darien, Conn.

Sir: An outrageous choice. A generation that has made our streets unsafe to walk, our highways suicide avenues, and our schools a shambles doesn't deserve such recognition. They are the overpublicized generation.

Your eloquent nonsense had me in stitches. If they have no time for hate, as you boldly state, who is it who commits more than half the crimes in this country? If they have no time for hate, whence comes the distrust they evidence? You write, "Today's youth appears more deeply committed to the fundamental Western ethos--decency, tolerance, brotherhood--than almost any generation." Fact is, the opposite is true.

You come close to truism when you list their Presidential choices, with Snoopy first. That's as serious as the majority of them get. Snoopy at least has a dream objective. I'm sure Snoopy will get the Red Baron long before TIME gets me to believe it is serious in this year's selection of Man of the Year.

Still, a lot of them are nice people.

DON E. MANNING, AGED 34 Chicago

Sir: It's sad, but I betcha that 25 years from now you won't be able to tell them from us.

RUTH S. PEROT, AGED 44 Mobile, Ala.

Talk About Adam

Sir: Congressman Powell [Dec. 30-Jan. 6] has committed and is continuing to commit a crime, not just against the people of his district, some of whom do not seem to mind, but against the people of the entire U.S. He has violated and is violating the honor of the Congress, and he must be removed.

NORMAN C. FOLDEN Woodstock, N.Y.

Sir: Although Powell is not a model of virtue and fully deserves any measures that may be taken against him, it is difficult to see him as the only tarnished spot on an otherwise flawless record of integrity and morality in the handling of taxpayers' money. His suggestion that the subcommittee investigate the spending of all House committees is a noble one recommending a course of action that is long overdue.

ERIC R. GILBERTSON Athens, Ohio

Sir: As income tax time rolls round again, I am sure that most Americans share my joy in the knowledge that we are all members of the N.A.A.A.C.P.--the National Association for the Advancement of Adam Clayton Powell.

C. J. BAGBY JR. Portland, Ore.

All In the Conceptualization

Sir: "Right You Are If You Say You Are--Obscurely" [Dec. 30] brought to mind one of my favorite quotes, Oscar Wilde's observation in Lady Windermere's Fan, that "nowadays to be intelligible is to be found out."

MIRIAM KALIS Des Moines

Sir: Your Essay on jargon points up one of the most basic problems in human understanding and communication: our misunderstandings with others often arise not out of what we say but out of what others infer from what they think we've said.

WALTER H. HANSEN Chicago

Sir: There are many valid criticisms that may be made of the present-day tendency toward use of jargon, especially in the social sciences. Unfortunately, most of the sociological terms you criticize represent valuable and insightful conceptualizations.

If a term is simply a confusing synonym for a common idea, then it is jargon. However, few if any of the words you attack meet this definition. Instead, you seem to be attacking concepts that you cannot understand without exerting some effort--a common anti-intellectual tactic.

STEPHEN BEACH Graduate Student in Sociology Duke University Durham, N.C.

Sir: The art professor at Instant College would have done well to quote the Navy League's pamphlet describing Harvard's Carpenter Center for Visual Arts this way: "It exemplifies conceptualistic innuendo pyramided upon spatial forbearance and is altogether tokenish of tactile cosmological luminous volumentality."

TEMPLE G. PORTER Swansea, Mass.

Sir: Jargon is the lubricant of scholarly communication. Its purpose is not to bamboozle the layman or screen academic incompetence behind verbiage, but to increase the precision of language and speed the exchange of ideas. The cost of using jargon--enduring snippy essays like yours --is considerably less than the benefits.

RICK MALT Princeton, N.J.

Portrait of Julie

Sir: Your cover story on Julie Andrews [Dec. 23] was a magnificent piece on a delightful human being. Aren't we all a little in love with her?

FRANK SIMMONS Chamblee, Ga.

Sir: Never have I seen anything more beautiful than your cover portrait. I would love to see originals by Koch; he's great.

W. HERBERT ARMSTRONG Tupelo, Miss.

How Many Copies

Sir: Referring to William Manchester's The Death of a President, you write [Dec. 23]: "25 copies of the manuscript were sent to six magazines." The fact is, seven copies were simultaneously submitted, one each to the five magazines you list and, in response to a special request, two copies to LIFE. Your report implies that this agency submitted a copy to United Artists. No copies were submitted to United Artists or any other motion picture company.

DON CONGDON Harold Matson Co. Inc. Manhattan

Please Pass the Pills

Sir: Your report on Indian population control [Dec. 30] may be a bit more pessimistic than is necessary. You say: "Even if birth control pills were economical, it would be an uphill battle to train peasant women in their regular use."

As to economics, both the United Arab Republic and Pakistan have huge pill programs. On training peasants, an Indian study says: "From field studies in Puerto Rico, Mexico and Ceylon, it has become evident that poorly educated women accept oral contraception enthusiastically and successfully. In that respect, Indian women are no different from their counterparts in other parts of the world."

All of us mistakenly equate illiteracy with lack of intelligence. When the pill regimen is explained to illiterate women, they apparently follow the instructions even more faithfully than many middle-class American women.

LEWIS C. FRANK JR. Information Center, Population Problems Manhattan

Burning While They Fiddle

Sir: Concerning your article on early violins [Dec. 30], I can only say fiddlesticks! The authorities you cite mention every solution to the Stradivari problem but the historically honest one: restoration of the sound intended by its maker.

It is impossible today to hear the original sound of a Stradivari because every one of these instruments has had its original fittings removed and more than 30 changes made; a modernized Strad does not bear any more resemblance to the sound intended by its maker than a harpsichord to a piano. Also, the excessive pressure of modern fittings is causing cracks, so that we have an ever increasing number of played-out Strads. The only solution to this vandalism: restore the original fittings and make the instruments true baroque violins that will blend with the harpsichord instead of drowning it out.

SOL BABITZ Ford Foundation Researcher in 18th century performance Los Angeles

A Thousand Times No

Sir: Not all Vassar girls are overjoyed at the prospect of moving to New Haven [Dec. 30]. Many of us are happily enjoy ing our "unnatural," all-female education and do not wish to go stale at Yale.

NANCY FALCIONE, '70 Vassar College Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

Sir: It would be safe to assume that the Yale man does not share Vassar's enthusiasm for the proposed "intellectual marriage of convenience." Several years ago, spurred by rumors of a similar merger, John E. Robson, a distraught member of the class of '52, wrote:

Can it be true what people say-- That Yale's admitting girls? Will floors of campus barbershops Be littered now with curls? Will all Yale's ivy-covered peaks Soon echo with their strident shrieks? And chapel bells forever after Compete with screams of distaff laughter? Will windows now in future springs Be hung with dainty underthings? "Bright College Years" three octaves higher? Our fiscal need is not that dire! Will not our manly intellects Be clouded o'er with thoughts of sex? And possibly, in future years, The football team will wear brassieres? Oh, comfort me and reassure That Yale will not become impure! If so, this vow I leave you with-- I'll surely send my son to Smith.

NANCY GREENBERG Metuchen, N.J.

The Real Scoop

Sir: Fie on TIME for calling astrology the "pseudoscientific 5,000-year-old Babylonian art of prediction" [Dec. 30]. Had your staff read my articles in Horoscope magazine, they might have learned something.

I don't see peace in Viet Nam just yet. North Viet Nam, South Viet Nam, Thailand, the U.S.--all have planets from 19 to 26 degrees Pisces, Virgo, Gemini and Sagittarius. These have been afflicted by Saturn, Uranus and Pluto. When these planets stop afflicting, pressures will ease. I doubt China will come in; the stars don't seem that bad. Yet. The station of Pluto at 20 Virgo December 23 walloped Johnson's Pluto, Kennedy's Mercury, and Manchester's Mars and Mercury. But Kennedy was not eclipsed by the recent election. He hasn't peaked out yet. 1967 is mixed.

Man and a nation is a machine; the horoscope is the blueprint of that machine. Oversimplified, of course. But if your staff knew astrology, you could scoop both Walter Lippmann and Joseph Alsop.

DALE RICHARDSON Astrological Research Foundation Los Angeles

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