To the Polls by Caddy and Subway

Sir: As a New Yorker, I view the possibility of Mr. Procaccino's election [Oct. 3] as possibly the worst thing that could ever happen to New York City. All progress that has occurred in the city could be obliterated. Let all the "Cadillac conservatives" lend themselves to the struggle of helping our city, and may all of us soon view the dawn of the age of human tolerance.

GARY M. COLE, '71 University of Wisconsin Madison, Wis.

Sir: If only Limousine Liberal John Lindsay & Co. had to ride the subways to work. If they had to send their children to public instead of private school. If they had to put up with the garbage men, teachers and transit workers going on strike. If they had to see their tax money spent on creating the welfare state that exists in New York City while they were working two jobs just to make ends meet. Then, and only then, maybe they would learn that people who do not live with the problems of the middle class cannot go about handing out wholesale advice and solutions and expect the middle class to go along with their hypocritical liberal double standards.

MARGUERITE VERDI South Ozone Park, N.Y.

Sir: When, oh when, will the people of this nation realize that the only way our problems can be solved is through men like John V. Lindsay? Is the white middle class going to buy the preachings of a few shrewd capitalists like Yorty, Charles Stenvig and Procaccino? If so, will the blacks, frustrated for the 15 millionth time, rise up in final, bloody revolt? I hope not.

I pray that some time in the future the majority of the voters will not accuse any man with an imagination of being a dangerous, fire-breathing radical.

DAVID T. GIBSON Houston

Sir: How about identifying the allegedly prominent Procaccino supporters? I consider myself au courant in metropolitan affairs, but many of the names are not known to me. West of the Alleghenies, I expect, most of the names go unrecognized by your average reader. Parochial notoriety, after all, is not national renown.

GEORGE F. MONAHAN Assistant Professor of Modern Languages Jersey City State College Jersey City

> It is not surprising that the backers of Procaccino, who claims to be the candidate of "the little man," are little known outside the New York area; the names were those supplied by Procaccino. Herewith, the gentlemen's titles for readers west --and possibly east--of the Alleghenies:

1. Professor Howard Adelson, chairman of history department, City College of New York

2. Earl Brown, former chairman of Human Rights Commission, New York City

3. John Burns, New York Democratic State Committee Chairman

4. Emanuel Celler, Democratic Congressman from Brooklyn, chairman of House Judiciary Committee

5. Meade Esposito, Brooklyn Democratic county chairman

6. James A. Farley, former Postmaster General of the U.S.

7. Jack Fuchsberg, former president of American Trial Lawyers Association (Mario Procaccino's campaign manager)

8. Bert Gelfand, city councilman from the Bronx

9. Lawrence Gerosa, former comptroller of New York City

10. Hulan Jack, state assemblyman and former Manhattan borough president

11. Rabbi Wolfe Kelman, New York City clergyman

12. Nicholas Kisburg, legislative director of Teamsters Joint Council 16

13. Andrew Mulrain, former commissioner of sanitation

14. John Murphy, Democratic Congressman from Staten Island

15. Bernard Relin, former chairman of the board of Rheingold Breweries

16. Paul Screvane, former deputy mayor of New York City

17. Louis Stulberg, president of International Ladies Garment Workers Union

18. Harry Van Arsdale, president of New York City Central Labor Council (A.F.L.-C.I.O.)

19. Moe Weinstein, minority leader of state assembly

20. Joseph Zaretzki, State senate minority leader.

Up the Down Escalator

Sir: After reading your analogy between Nixon's plight and Zeno's paradox [Oct. 3], it occurred to me that Nixon has been like the kid walking up an escalator that's going down.

CHASE WEBB San Francisco

Sir: When President Nixon said, "We need to have a middle course" between "instant integration" and "segregation forever," it seemed quite obvious to me that he was advocating the attainment of integration as quickly as could reasonably be expected; not necessarily instantaneous nor delaying it forever. The analogies made by TIME to "Zeno's paradox" and "the midpoint between Now and Forever" are indeed preposterous.

DR. RUSSELL D. SHUPE Houston

Sir: I am very comforted to see that Richard Nixon may keep a few weekends open in the next three months in order to watch the Washington Redskins in action [Sept. 26]. I hope the President's Cabinet keeps an eye on them also, because it may be the only leadership they will have the pleasure of witnessing during the next 3 1/2years. The leader I am referring to, of course, is Vince Lombardi.

THOMAS W. CONWELL New London, Conn.

Sir: Concerning the implications that President Nixon is enjoying too relaxed a presidency, I recall having read of draft revisions, troop withdrawals, ABM systems, welfare revision plans, de-inflation measures. . . Not all of this, I'm sure, took place in a golf cart or on the 50-yard line.

TERESA MILES Marylhurst, Ore.

Something in the Gizzard

Sir: Your cover story on drugs [Sept. 26] makes it manifestly clear that today's youngster has something in his gizzard.

But it's something more than antagonism to the system, to a governing body or to capitalism. You can see it, feel it. The gap gets wider. Maybe it's the whole pointlessness of the human condition that breeds this weird and hostile detachment.

It spooks me. Because all this breeds in turn a kind of reckless tolerance in the adult world for youthful peccadilloes--the drug scene, the Marxist bent, the inordinate self-indulgence.

Sure, the kids make sense sometimes --a crazy sort of sense. But it beats me. What do they really want?

WILLIAM DONNELLY Tulsa, Okla.

Sir: I was pleased that you identified the problem not as one of pot per se, but as "the product of a complex and often frustrating society." How unfortunate that the efforts of professors and politicians--whether to legalize or penalize --are too often related to'the symptoms of the problem rather than the problem itself. For are not these young folks but the children and grandchildren of the "hollow men" of whom T. S. Eliot wrote nearly a half-century ago? Turning on, tuning out, getting high or getting stoned only reflect an inner starvation and thirst for a satisfying, fulfilling life.

LEN SUNUKJIAN Youth Associate Mount Hermon Assoc. Inc. Mount Hermon, Calif.

Sir: Ironically, the very people who have persistently claimed, without foundation, that marijuana leads to heroin have now set in motion a naive crusade to artificially drive the price of marijuana up in the hope that this will stem its use.

It apparently hasn't occurred to them that with the price up, the marijuana market is now appealing to the underworld.

Kids who dealt with amateurs will now deal with professionals who also deal in hard drugs. Hard drug usage will increase, and the crusaders can then, of course, say "I told you so."

JOHN LONERO East Hampton, N.Y.

Sir: I am an 18-year-old college freshman who began using pot only this summer.

In your article certain opponents of legalization expressed the belief that one intoxicant, in this case alcohol, was enough for our culture. But you also pointed out that youth has created its own culture or "counterculture." This is the crux of the issue. Adults are trying to force their culture down our throats, and with it their intoxicant, alcohol.

Until adult society learns to respect our culture and life style and with it our intoxicant, which may very well prove to be safer than theirs, they can never earn our respect or admiration.

STEPHEN D. POGUE Lafayette, La.

Sir: I think that the time has come when we must begin to think of alcohol in the same category as other dangerous drugs. Send a reporter to my hospital and I'll show him where our medical tax dollars are going. They're being used like blotters to soak up the alcohol in which most of my patients are pickled.

PAUL B. DEAN, M.D. Los Angeles

Clunks That Go Thunk

Sir: It was fascinating to read all about how those brilliant designers in Detroit design doors that go "thunk." Detroit has engineered other important sounds into my late-model car. There is an impressive "budda-deh-buddedeh" in my rear axle. There is a scintillating "chatcheteh-chatch-eteh" coming from a rear shock absorber, a soothing "toketah, toketah" from my radio antennae and a "tssshhhzbbbd" from my radio. And I may well have the only door that closes with a "puh-lox-ette-kuh." I have been assured by the service manager that, "dats duh way der bill, nut-tin' ya kin do."

RICHARD ROTBERG Skokie, 111.

Of Lamps and Mirrors

Sir: I've often wondered which article in TIME would finally compel me to write you a letter. In 15 years of reading, I've often wanted to write; tonight I find I have no choice.

Thank you for the hauntingly beautiful article, "Black Lamps: White Mirrors" [Oct. 3]. I shall use it as a teacher and keep it among my important papers always.

SISTER NOEL KERNAN, A.C. Homestead, Pa.

Sir: It is odd that you overlooked entirely the French genius Theodore Gericault--the one great white artist who, in a score of works from the latter portion of his all-too-brief 32 years, first made a veritable specialty of portraying the black man, whether beautiful, buffeted, or bold.

Surprising, too, in your list of "intense lyric voices," is the omission of such major black American poets as Paul Laurence Dunbar, William Stanley Braithwaite and Countee Cullen.

Still, a useful and TIMEly presentation. CALDWELL TITCOMB Chairman, School of Creative Arts Brandeis University Waltham, Mass.

Sir: It is absolutely impossible to give a truly representative view of either Claude McKay or the spirit of black people without including McKay's poem If We Must Die:

If we must die--let it not be like hogs, Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursed lot. If we must die--oh, let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monsters we defy Shall be constrained to honor us though dead! Oh, Kinsmen! We must meet the common foe; Though far outnumbered, let us, show us brave, And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow! What though before us lies the open grave? Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

MIRIAM ADAHAN Berkeley, Calif.

No Defense

Sir: Man! Did I love the review of the musical Salvation [Oct. 3]. If anything can bring this sloppy, incompetent non-art up short it will be ridicule. They are happy when they shock us, delirious when they infuriate us. But they have no defense when they bore us. So let's rid ourselves of this arid plethora of nothingness before we die of boredom--ridicule them back to the mediocrity from which they sprang.

VIRGINIA PON FELLOWS Flint, Mich.

Generation Gap

Sir: In your lukewarm article on America's supersonic transport [Oct. 3], you state dogmatically that "every previous generation of aircraft has been cheaper, safer and more comfortable than the one before, but the SST is only faster." Nonsense. Speed has been the overriding criterion for each new generation of aircraft. The 747s and the upcoming DC-10s and L-1011s are merely larger versions of the jet that came out ten years ago. The SST is, in fact, a new generation based on a substantial jump in speed, just as the jets represented a substantial jump over the pistons.

WAYNE W. PARRISH Editor in Chief Aviation Daily Washington, D.C.

My Woid!

Sir: Norman Treigle's "tough accent" is pure New Orleans and not diluted by Brooklynese, as your account suggests [Oct. 3]. He talked that way when I knew him as a student at Loyola University of the South. So do most natives of New Orleans whose speech is not affected by the patois of rural southwestern Louisiana. When I first taught high school boys in New Orleans in 1935, I too was struck by what I thought was a Canarsie accent. The boys with the "tough accent" were mainly natives of the New Orleans "Irish Channel." As one of them recited to me after class: "They say in spring the boid is on the wing. My woid! How absoid! The wing is on the boid."

JOSEPH H. FIGHTER Stillman Professor Harvard University Divinity School Cambridge, Mass.

QandA

Sir: As project manager on a construction job employing about 150 union construction workers, I can perhaps answer Assistant Labor Secretary Arthur Fletcher's question, "Why should a Negro who can be a college-trained engineer want to be a plumber?" [Sept. 26]. He can make more money as a union plumber.

CECIL TRENT JR. Engineer Beaumont, Texas

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