Taxing the Taxman

Sir: I am so outraged and appalled that my mind is spluttering! Your article "Why Tax Reform Is So Urgent and So Unlikely" [April 4] should be read and reread by every middle-income citizen of the U.S. All these years, while my husband and I and our two daughters have been trying to keep within our means so that we can pay our bills and taxes as good citizens, we have been taken.

Paying our taxes with the usual good-natured griping, we felt that as long as the people making much more than we did were paying their share, the tax burden could be borne with a feeling of having done our share, too. Now, we are hit between the eyes with the outrageous fact that the burden has not been shared.

It has always been accepted that the Government doesn't collect income taxes from mobsters; the indigent cannot be expected to pay, nor can welfare recipients. And now we have to swallow the bitter pill of knowing that the wealthy do not have to pay taxes either. I'm disgusted!

Where can I sign up to join the militant group of tax gripers? I'm ready!

(MRS.) HELEN S. TIETZ Wilkinsburg, Pa.

Sir: Perhaps the money given generously to charity (and providing a tax deduction) was used to set up a scholarship program for needy college students, or perhaps the gift went to fight cancer or heart disease.

Why shouldn't our tax structure reward the donor who does so much for his fellow man? What will it cost our great institutions of higher learning and our volunteer crusades against disease if these tax incentives are removed?

STAN HALL Canton, N.Y.

Sir: Let's be honest. A tax break is an exemption when it applies to us and a loophole when it applies to others.

MARTIN J. MILES Boulder, Colo.

Hail and Farewell

Sir: Your excellent cover article on General Eisenhower, the great soldier President [April 4], really touched me and carried my heart to Abilene. How accurately you report that he embodied serene America. Standing on his achievements, Ike may truly be regarded as one of America's, nay, the world's greatest generals. Adlai Stevenson once said: "I venture to suggest that patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime." The same can be said of Ike, the hero who despised heroics.

ANURUP BANERJEE Calcutta, India

Sir: So it's a B plus for Eisenhower in the presidential final exams, is it? All he did was keep us from the brink, from confrontation, escalation and tragic military catastrophe. If that rates a B plus, Kennedy would be lucky to get an F minus.

Let the professors grade papers. History will report on Presidents soon enough.

THOMAS B. STREISSGUTH Los Angeles

Sir: Apparently we not only liked Ike; we loved him.

ELIZABETH A. SCHLADEMAN Pittsburgh

Sir: Your article reminded me of an anecdote related by my father, who was born near Abilene, Kans., in 1888. During the patriotic fervor following the blowing up of the battleship Maine in 1898, my father and his contemporaries frequently played soldier. They refused to let Ike Eisenhower play. He was too little.

JOSEPH E. GOODELL JR. Bryan, Ohio

Sir: A commentary on the violent age in which we live was reflected in the question of our six-year-old daughter, while watching the funeral of Eisenhower. She asked: "Mother, who shot him?"

MRS. DESMOND HERBERT Jackson, Mich.

Role to Play-Sir: I do not know on-what basis you reach the conclusion in your essay "The Future of Black Leadership" [April 4] that "Roy Wilkins, despite the 450,000 membership of the N.A.A.C.P., has lost more ground than any other leader, with the decline of integration as the principal issue and the loss of the N.A.A.C.P.'s traditional adversary role."

Last year N.A.A.C.P. membership increased by 23,239 and its total income by $745,233.77. Included in the association's 1968 membership are 67,586 youth--the largest number of young people in the civil rights movement. Our membership figures, our incoming mail and the demand for his public appearance indicate no "loss of ground" by our executive director. On the contrary, there has been ample evidence of his increase in stature.

Integration remains a vital issue despite the loud and widely publicized demands of the black neo-segregationists. It is noteworthy that Southern black folk who have suffered most from the chains of Jim Crow have been most consistent in pressing for acceleration of desegregation. Meanwhile, the N.A.A.C.P. continues its "traditional adversary role," aided now in many areas by the Federal Government, thanks to new legislation largely instigated and vigorously and persistently lobbied for by the N.A.A.C.P.

HENRY LEE MOON Director, Public Relations N.A.A.C.P. Manhattan

Sir: You correctly pointed out the reasons why white liberals yearn for the Martin Luther King image rather than that of Malcolm X--self-interest. And your statement that "white Americans are well advised to provide every ounce of help they can" is in the same vein. What you only underscore in a parenthesis ("whites really choose black leaders") and in a reference to "white racism" is the much deeper problem. The crucial difference between King and Malcolm was that until shortly before his death, King was saying "Look, whitey, move over and let us have some of what you've got," while Malcolm realized that what was needed was the more difficult job of changing the basic structures in society that continue to oppress the black community. How about trying an essay on white racism, since the goals and directions of black leaders are almost determined by such racism?

GARY L. CHAMBERLAIN Berkeley, Calif.

Capp and Gown

Sir: TIME'S account of my college lectures [April 11] recorded that I laugh at my own jokes (and I do), but neglected to mention that audiences laugh with me, and louder. TIME'S account recorded the opinion that I was unfair to students; it neglected to mention that I often am given standing ovations by students. TIME recorded that I am no longer considered a liberal; it neglected to mention that I was given honorary degrees at two liberal colleges this year (Rollins and Ursinus). TIME recorded, regretfully but with unquenchable hope, "Capp so far has never been attacked on campus." TIME did not mention that I appear on campuses by invitation of students, and that I am, I rather think, the most in demand of all campus lecturers at my outrageous fee. TIME mentioned that fee; it neglected to mention that, in cases where schools cannot afford it, I frequently come free and accept instead paid-up scholarships, which I award to hard-up kids.

The students I blast are not the dissenters, but the destroyers--the less than 4% who lock up deans in washrooms, who burn manuscripts of unpublished books, who make combination pigpens and playpens of their universities. The remaining 96% detest them as heartily as I do. They are the kids who invite me to their campuses, give me their ovations. To call a guy "anti-youth" because he is revolted by the gangsters among them is as fraudulent as to call LIFE magazine "anti-Italian" because it is revolted by the Mafia.

AL CAPP Boston

Nice Little Poison Sticks

Sir: Last summer I was asked, as a consultant, to see a child with chronic lead poisoning. The pediatricians of our staff were speculating about the source of the lead and supplied the pat answer of paint chips, which the child's mother agreed she saw him eating. The pediatricians' answer agrees with all of the literature. But the literature, including your article "Deadly Lead in Children" [April 4], does not contain one of the most likely sources of today's lead poisoning in children.

Putty, which is used to hold window glass in place, contains 10% white lead (lead carbonate). This material is notorious for coming loose from the window frames in nice little candy sticks. Cans of lead putty currently on shelves in New Haven, Conn., are not even labeled "poison." Stores have about an equal amount of putty for sale as they do of glazing compound which serves the same purpose and contains no lead.

About our case of lead poisoning last summer, the child's mother finally recalled that she had also seen him eating putty which was cracking off the window frames, and the candy sticks of putty were probably a lot handier and tastier than paint chips.

RICHARD B. SWINT, M.D. Assistant Resident in Dermatology Yale University College of Medicine New Haven, Conn.

Bubble, Bubble

Sir: In your article on astrology [March 21], you included a description and picture of a white witch--Dennis Boiling (Antares Auriel); I am that person. Apart from slandering the great witch mother and high priestess Sybil Leek, the article was a wretched anathema to me.

I was listed under the subtitle "Spells for

Love and Money." Witches never do spells for money unless a member of the craft is in definite financial need. Witches do not use psychedelic drugs ("along with pot and fascination"), and the "free colleges for dropouts" have the fat, rich and bored bourgeoisie for the largest part of their student body. My class was not "a how-to course in witchcraft"--there is no such thing, there never can be. There is no such program as "how to be a witch in ten easy lessons." Witchcraft is not folderol--it is the first religion known to man, a very ancient pagan religion antedating Christianity by thousands of years:

Because articles such as yours plant seeds of doubt, suspicion, and misunderstanding, witchcraft must remain hidden underground for years to come, just as it has been occulted for centuries.

DENNIS BOLLING (Antares Auriel) San Jose, Calif.

Walls as Canvases

Sir: I'd like to say a good word about the Helen Frankenthaler piece [March 28]. If all art criticism were written on that level of intelligence, readability and acuteness, we'd be a better-informed public. Too often the critics drown themselves and their ideas in a swirling sea of rhetoric intelligible to a favored few, sometimes only one.

But your review of the Frankenthaler show told us what it was abovjt without being patronizing. The author informed and entertained without being pedantic. Who could ask for anything more?

ALFRED PALCA Manhattan

Sir: I had put off repainting my living room for too long. But your inspiring ai-ticle made me realize that my living-room walls were not just walls but huge, hard canvases screaming for fulfillment.

Paint cans and sponges in hand, and careful to use my shoulder rather than my wrist, I attacked the first wall with Sherwin-Williams gloss, trying for a flatheaded confrontation. There was something monumentally upsetting in the result; it was a chaos of raw emotion. The militant playfulness marking the first attack gave way to a scarifying vitality, almost flamelike, leaping forth and savagely sideways marking the spot where my youngest son had rubbed his backside across the wet wall. I charged on to the next one, which allowed for the incorporation of empty space, i.e., the doorway leading to the kitchen. Trying for a work full of people, animals, flowers and so on that only the sophisticated could see, I used only canary yellow but with a human edge around the doorway as a playful counterpoint to the hard edge of the baseboard.

Proclaiming no new doctrines and founding no new schools, I hit the last wall four hours later and proceeded to create stately, bold, blaring, cherry, apricot, pale gold, mauve, maroon, crimson, orange, cinnamon, whistling blue sails of forms. No gimmicks or gadgetry here, thank you. Carefully avoiding dehumanization and de-sexualization (in the painterly tradition), I strove to leave out as many myriad forms and colors as was possible. When finished, the wall seemed to cry out: "My name is Pat O'Connor--and goddammit, I can paint as well as Helen Frankenthaler."

PATRICK T. O'CONNOR Chevy Chase, Md.

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