Man of the Year (Contd.)

Sir / For their persistent and unfaltering courage in speaking out against Soviet suppression of intellectuals, my vote for Man of the Year goes jointly to Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov.

CAROLYN CLARKE LAMPI

Line Lexington, Pa.

Sir / Times have changed. It is time that TIME changed. Instead of Man of the Year, I suggest you use Person of the Year. I nominate Gloria Steinem.

CINDY HERMANN

New Concord, Ohio

Sir / I nominate Golda Meir for Woman of the Year.

MIRIAM H. MICHAEL

Paducah, Ky.

Sir / The Man of the Year? It is Egypt's Anwar Sadat, who cried wolf so many times that no one was listening when the real thing appeared.

(MRS.) M. ROSANN REESE

Glendale, Calif.

Sir / Having been subjected to lying, thieving, stealing, cover-ups, and God knows what all for the last months, it was refreshing to see a real professional do his job: Secretariat, Man of the Year.

FRANK B. WRIGHT III

Lynchburg, Va.

Sir / I nominate a true conservationist and civil libertarian for Man of the Year: Justice William O. Douglas.

LUCIEN BRUNO JR.

Cayce, S.C.

Sir / For TIME'S 1973 Man of the Year I nominate Alice Cooper. He is one of the few people in this country in whom I can still believe.

ALISON POWER

Northampton, Mass.

Grandpa Was Right

Sir / As a young boy, I had always viewed my grandfather, who constantly scurried about the house turning off unused lights, water faucets, and the like, as a man of the past unwilling to face the bountiful future. But after reading Stefan Kanfer's Essay "The (Possible) Blessings of Doing Without" [Dec. 3] and my latest electric bill, I now know that I was disgracefully shortsighted. Indeed, who would have ever guessed that Grandfather was, in reality, a harbinger of things to come?

PAUL CAVALLO

Poway, Calif.

Sir / I am miserable when I am cold; I just don't function. But if the President can turn his thermostat back, then I can turn my thermostat back.

If it's good for the President, then it's good for me.

However, if the President or any of his family should go to a warm climate this winter, then I will be forced to turn my thermostat up and go for a Sunday drive.

If it's good for the President, it's also good for me.

MARY LAMB

Ann Arbor, Mich.

Sir / Congratulations on the new section on Energy with its emphasis on conserving energy. Although, as Ralph Davidson made clear in his publisher's letter, "energy may be a separate section in TIME only as long as the current emergency lasts," the need for conserving energy will last for many years to come. "There is considerable waste and," as you also emphasized, "plenty of room for industry and individuals to save energy without significantly lowering the U.S. standard of living."

JOHN H. GIBBONS

Director

Office of Energy Conservation U.S. Department of the Interior Washington, D.C.

Sir / May I suggest a design for the bicentennial memorial coin? It would be intended to remind us, once we emerge from the energy crisis-a few years from now-not to get ourselves in the same kind of mess again.

The obverse of the coin would bear the motto "All Are Part of the Web of Life," and would be circled about by a chain of earth, water, sky, microbe and man. The verso of the coin would carry the motto "There Is No Free Lunch," over a design of crossed bicycles rampant upon a field of Franklin stoves.

ELIZABETH F. GRANOFF

Carmel Valley, Calif.

Sir / The rationing of equal amounts of gasoline for big and small cars is the only fair way.

The small-car owner has contributed less to the gasoline shortage and ought to be less affected by it.

STEPHEN R. PETERSON

Fresno, Calif.

Sir / I think most states should raise the minimum age for young drivers at least one year, and in some states by two years.

This would certainly provide a terrific saving in gasoline.

ELAINE WRIGHT

Anderson, S.C.

Sir / It seems ridiculous to me that after having spent a good deal of money on warm winter clothing, the American public complains when they find out that they will have to wear it this year. All along, stores, houses, schools, etc., have been kept far too warm in the winter for anyone to wear wool without being miserably uncomfortable; yet in the summer a person cannot enter a public place without donning a sweater to keep from turning blue.

Because of the fuel shortage, we will have to wear the proper clothing in the proper season.

WENDY SHAY

Bloomington, Ind.

A Black Eye for Secretaries

Sir / I find it very difficult to believe that Rose Mary Woods accidentally erased 18 minutes of tape [Dec. 10]. I have been an executive secretary for 20 years, have transcribed from many different kinds of recording machines, and cannot, in all good conscience, believe her statement that she pressed the wrong button. When working on a transcribing machine, you always have uppermost in your mind that you will press the right button because the recorded word is so very important-more so in her case than any other.

What a black eye for secretaries!

ETHEL M. STURGIS

Appleton, Wis.

Sir / Miss Woods' story of the tape erasure is one more that is not believable. Highly capable, experienced executive secretaries and administrative assistants do not make such mistakes. By her own words, Miss Woods termed the erasure of the tape "stupid." I doubt that Miss Woods is stupid.

MAYBELLE LACEY

Dallas

Sir / For obvious reasons, I nominate Rose Mary Woods as Secretary of the Year.

ANTHONY J. TREPEL

Sunnyvale, Calif.

Bright Young Things

Sir / I fail to see why the fate of the Administration should be in part decided by first Cox's and now Jaworski's wolf pack of bright young things out of that New York "humanist" school [Dec. 3]. They are the type that wants to give us abolition of the death penalty, gun control (job insurance for the working street goon), mass busing (so your kids and mine can get mugged for sociology's sake) and all the other claptrap we rejected in the last national election.

W.R. DAVIDSON

Tucson, Ariz.

A Right to Be Ridiculous

Sir / It is a crime that Professor Shockley can't even express his views [Dec. 3]. His ideas are ridiculous, but he still has the right to speak. Only if he speaks will the vast majority of people realize that he should go back to physics.

DARRELL HOLMQUIST

Carmichael, Calif.

Sir / I fully agree with your contention that Professor William Shockley's First Amendment rights are being abused. But Shockley abuses his position in the scientific community when he trades on irrelevant past accomplishments and position to command a forum for his ideas in a field in which he has neither formal training nor significant experience. If a Mr. William Shockley were to expound upon his theory of dysgenics, would he command the same audience and credibility as "Stanford University Professor William Shockley, a Nobel prizewinner"? I doubt it.

LAWRENCE F. SIMEONE

Berkeley, Calif.

Teat for Tat

Sir / Re our sign at the recent Nefta-Gaz Exposition in Moscow [Dec. 3]: the Russian for "completion" does indeed mean "orgasm" in street language. But we are nevertheless stuck with the term, as any copy of the Soviet-published English-Russian Oil Trade Dictionary will readily attest. In trade jargon like ours, which is fraught with such unpedigreed English phrases as "mating parts," "male and female threads," "bastard connections" and "nogo nipples," perhaps your comment on our display (which received a merit award from the Soviets) was only teat for tat.

C.M. STACY

Technical Translator Otis Engineering Corp. Dallas

H.S.T.'s Blunt Speech

Sir / I am sure that the late President Truman's utterances on various national figures more than a decade ago will offend many readers of the forthcoming book, Plain Speaking[Dec. 3].

But I wonder if it isn't better to speak as Chief Executive with a plain tongue rather than a forked one. Truman evaluated things as he saw them and verbally put his cards on the table in a truthful, if sometimes blunt fashion.

KEITH MARVIN

Troy, N.Y.

Sir / President Truman neglected to add, in his 77-year-old incipient senility, that had it not been for Douglas MacArthur, "the dumb son of a bitch," and the dumb generals and that cowardly "weak" Dwight Eisenhower, he would not have had a country to be President of. The U.S. can always use such dumb, weak, cowardly sons of bitches while the Trumans sit safely at home or in the Senate-waiting for the country to be saved. And don't remind me he was a captain in World War I. He was still young enough to have been a dumb general himself in World War II.

PHYLLIS DORN

Washington, D.C.

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