To the Editors:

It seems we finally have a President! A leader. One who seriously cares about this nation and is willing to help us help ourselves to overcome our energy shortcomings [April 25].

My youth was spent in doing without, though I now do enjoy every hard-earned luxury. But I gladly offer to forsake all the unnecessary, comfortable luxuries in order to preserve this great land and its resources for our greatest resource--hope for the future.

Sue McNabb

Green City, Mo.

I am grievously disappointed in the Carter Administration's energy plan. It fails utterly to come to grips with the energy crisis in an honest and creative manner. Instead of a bold frontal attack on this grave problem, we are offered a patchwork of hashed-over, reworked "solutions" that will merely put off a little longer the day of reckoning. We are betraying our children.

Thomas Smith

San Diego

The proposed gas tax should correctly be called "The Carter Old, Poor and Workman Tax" since it will: 1) penalize the workingman dependent on the auto to and from his job, 2) hurt the poor who cannot afford new little cars, 3) restrict the old on fixed pensions, 4) increase food prices even further due to higher farming and trucking costs, and 5) make the auto manufacturers wealthy through accelerated replacement of large autos with small ones.

R.L. Clark

Irvine, Calif.

The American Way of Life with its energy use is like a canoe approaching Niagara Falls. Unfortunately we are all in this boat together, and we have just been thrown the last rope. Are we now going to sit and watch our politicians let it slip away, because they can't decide whether or not it might bruise their fingers if they grab it?

Dr. Elmar R. Reiter

Fort Collins, Colo.

There is no carrot with the stick. All I see ahead is an endless road of escalating prices against nonescalating income, with vast uncertainty about a better future for our children and theirs. I don't mind pulling in my belt, but I need more incentive than their mere survival.

Margaret Leitch Roswell,

N. Mex.

Stimulating to the Soul

Isaac Asimov's nightmare of the future [April 25] gives me great hope. I have been living this energy-conserving life for some time and find it stimulating to the soul as well as the body.

Diane Dropsho

Madison, Wis.

Isaac Asimov's vision of the energy-starved society of 1997 is less frightening than my own. With diminished energy and the inevitable widespread unemployment, I would expect violence and social chaos.

Pearl L. Carlson

Omaha

If population control is so important to the future of the earth, why do U.S. citizens get a tax deduction for each new energy guzzler they bring into the world?

Hannah Spiehler

Pittsford, N. Y.

Bitter Truth

Truth seems to be most bitter when voiced by a diplomat or a person in the limelight. There are elements of truth in what you call the "bloopers" of Andrew Young [April 25].

To refer to the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. as "Motor Mouth" is both distasteful and a disgrace to the man and the office he represents.

Andy, I like your style. Keep speaking out!

Olu A. Olusanya

Washington, D.C.

We think a more appropriate tag for Andrew Young would be "Young Butz."

William and Vivian Mace

Sunnyvale, Calif.

Equality for All

The idea of the Equal Rights Amendment [April 25] is to guarantee equality for all. There's no way of telling at this time whether males or females would best benefit by the amendment. I tend to believe that in the long run males will benefit most. I can think of hundreds of ways--e.g., child possession after divorce, child support, alimony, less military draft burden--in which men will benefit. That is why I am for ERA.

Jim Hosek

Pittsburgh

If the opponents of ERA would restrain their hysterical fear of coed toilets and homosexual marriages long enough to read the 52 simple words of the proposed amendment, they would probably be intensely embarrassed at having been duped by the Anita Bryants and Phyllis Schlaflys and their phantom issues.

Mary B. Fylstra

Stanford, Calif.

TIME blames the defeat of ERA in Florida on what it calls "the phantom issues, not the realities."

The phantom issues are mostly conjured up by the pro-ERA press. A good example is the new phantom issue manufactured by TIME, namely, that my "Stop ERA" brigades "have descended on legislators ... wearing long formal dresses."

I've testified at many state legislative hearings, and I have never yet appeared in a long formal dress.

Can't we debate the ERA on the level of what it will or won't do without the personal attacks, the epithets, and the "phantom issues"? The kind of dress the ERA opponents wear is a total irrelevancy to the issue of whether or not we should change the U.S. Constitution to treat women exactly like men.

Phyllis Schlafly

Alton,Ill.

If ERA advocates are truly in favor of "equality of rights not to be denied by government on the basis of sex," why is it that I, a highly educated white male and disabled veteran, cannot get a job, even with the Federal Government, because of female pressure groups and their support of quota systems?

And where was Betty Friedan with her quote, "I say to the women of America, we gotta stop being so ladylike," when Viet Nam was raging? Certainly not trying to take my place at the induction center. They want to have their cake and eat it too.

Dennis W. Greenia

Atlanta

Overpotted and Overpaid

I realize more than ever that rock stars [April 25] are overglorified, over self-indulged, overpotted--but mostly overpaid.

Neva Semonian Gallegos

Torrance, Calif.

Bob Dylan isn't the first idol who built a living room he could ride a horse through. Will Rogers built it and then did it. He even practiced steer roping from the exposed rafters.

Victoria A. MacDonald

Idyllwild,, Calif.

Social injustice, materialism, economic inequality--I always thought these were the targets, not the goals, of the Woodstock generation's cultural revolution of the'60s.

Rhys Brindley

Philadelphia

No Liberal Lobby

In your article on the political clout of organized labor [April 11], you incorrectly labeled Common Cause "the liberal lobby." Common Cause members come from all political ideologies and parties; we are a nonpartisan group.

Common Cause, as a citizen-lobbying organization, deals not with liberal v. conservative issues but with citizens v. government issues. We oppose the special-interest groups and closed, secretive government.

Kurt Vorndran

Madison, Wis.

Secret Christians

Your story on Catholics who celebrate Passover was very interesting [April 11]. You will be surprised to know that almost the same thing happens in Japan, not to Jews but to Christians. Kakure Kirishitan means secret Christian. These people behave like Buddhists in public, but perform their own Christian rituals in private. During the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries Christianity was forbidden by the rulers of Japan. Though forced to leave their religion, the Kakure Kirishitans still remained Christians. Like Marranos, they kept their faith in secret even after the official freedom of religion was proclaimed.

Shuichi Yoshimi

Kamakura-shi, Japan

Fabulous Nurses

In your story of Susan Foss [April 25], you wrote: "Anywhere else in the world, the pretty, 20-year-old Auckland, N.Z., housewife would probably be confined to a hospital for the rest of her life."

Wrong! My wife, who died eleven years ago with a spinal tumor, was confined to bed at home and the fabulous Visiting Nurses stopped in daily to check her.

My wife was paralyzed from the arms down and was in a circ-o-lectric bed and had to be turned every two hours from her back to her stomach and vice versa to prevent bedsores.

The Christian Mothers Society of our parish formed teams of women, and turned her during the day when I was at work. Our children ran home during school recess to assist their mother. At night the entire family pitched in.

New Zealand is evidently doing an excellent job. The Milwaukee area medical community did an equally fine job eleven years ago.

Norman S. Jaques

Elm Grove, Wis.

All That Glitters

What is lacking from Norman Lear's All That Glitters is enjoyment [April 25]. As a "liberated" woman, I find it equally painful to see men as the victims of repression.

Doric Caplan

Arlington, Va.

In my opinion, All That Glitters is a glittering success. Norman Lear has outdone himself this time.

Could it be that some viewers are upset because Lear has given us a look at what could've been? Or perhaps he's giving us a glimpse of what's to come.

"I am a woman, hear me roar--in numbers too big to ignore."

Cherie J. Jackson

Denver

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