Highly Irregular (Cont'd)

Sir:

Loved the "Highly Irregular" item [TIME, June 21]. How about:

I am broadminded; you are leftish; he is a Communist? . . .

It's a wonderful game . . .

MARTHA HUSBANDS

Needham Heights, Mass.

Sir:

To make the conjugation of highly irregular verbs more interesting, enlist "apt alliteration's artful aid" as follows:

I fly; you flurry; she flits. I am sturdy; you are stout; he is a slob.

Better still, select verbs that have both a literal and a figurative meaning, as for example:

I am brilliant; you sometimes shine; he is not quite bright.

HOBART ROGERS, M.D.

Oakland, Calif.

Sir:

. . . I have some unusual facets in my personality; you are rather eccentric; he's nuts. . .

CONNIE CAMPBELL

Waukegan, Ill.

Prescription for Peace

Sir:

. . . I have studied your issue of June 14 from cover to cover, and nowhere do I find your weekly report of Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr's marathon prescription for the elimination of sin and wrong-thinking. You have so accustomed us to this treatment, week in & week out, that no longer can we find peace without our regular dosage . . . .

ROBERT S. BERGER

Chicago, Ill.

P:Let Reader Berger not relax his vigilance; TIME hopes to quote Reinhold Niebuhr again, any week now.--ED.

Departure & Arrival

Sir:

Please accept my hearty thanks for the kindly and gracious citation in your "Goodbye, Messrs. Chips" [TIME, June 21]. Such a citation is worth waiting 70 years for. I have much the same feeling as that expressed by Mark Twain after receiving the Doctor of Letters honorary degree from Oxford University: "I feel as if I had received an official emancipation from ignorance and vice . . ." After reading TIME's gay precis, I confess that I felt no sense of departure, but rather the distinct conviction of arrival . . .

ARCHIBALD HENDERSON

University of North Carolina

Chapel Hill, N.C.

Oi & Er

Sir:

You might correct an error and at the same time make a small contribution to philology by noting that neither the late Peter McGuinness nor any other authentic representative of Greenpoint referred to the section as Green-pernt [TIME, June 21]. I knew McGuinness well . . . and I never once heard him or anyone else from Greenpoint mispronounce the section's name. . .It is perfectly true that New Yorkers often render "oi" as "er," and vice versa, but I can swear under oath that Greenpoint is called Greenpernt only by people from Coney Island, Croton-on-Hudson and Beverly Hills.

RICHARD H. ROVERE

Hyde Park, N.Y.

F for Fighter

Sir:

. . .Unless there have been drastic changes in. . .identifying Army and Navy planes, there are some bad mistakes in TIME, June 21. . .

The Navy's planes are the only ones that have an F preceding the identifying number (F4-U, etc.). In the Army the letter P precedes the number (P-80, etc.). In the Navy the F stands for fighter, in the A.A.F. the P for pursuit . . .

RALPH HARBISON JR.

Morganton, N.C.

P:No mistake--changes in identifying marks. Both the Navy and the Air Force now use the symbol F for their new jet fighters. Other new Air Force designations: A for amphibious, H for helicopter, R for reconnaissance and photographic, S for search and rescue, T for trainer.--ED.

On the Dots

Sir:

Your remarks regarding my editorial in the American Journal of Surgery . . . made for an erroneous indictment of both the physician and the psychiatrist. I neither said nor implied that "Almost every patient who dies of carcinoma . . . has been diagnosed as a psychoneurotic" [TIME, June 21]. The dots delete the important words: "of the body or tail of the pancreas." This tumor . . . gives no physical signs and produces no symptoms other than a vague abdominal pain, and furthermore, defies all methods of diagnosis including X-ray and laboratory studies. Only surgical exploration will provide the answer . . .

WM. C. BECK, M.D.

Sayre, Pa.

The Fourth Nail

Sir:

. . .In your June 7 issue appears one legend as to the origin of the gypsy clan. Here is another one which was taught the children of Ukrainian descent in Austria-Hungary . . .

Immediately after the final judgment as to Christ's guilt, Roman soldiers ordered a smith to forge four nails for the crucifixion, one for each hand and foot . . .

As he forged the first and second nails, the smith brooded on the fact that a truth-loving and kind man, who had done no wrong known to anyone, was to be nailed to the cross. He finished the third nail and then threw down his tongs . . .

The soldiers arrived, demanded the four nails, and were given only three. The smith calmly told them he had no materials for the fourth nail, at which the soldiers screamed "tsigane" (meaning liar) and the family was ordered to leave the town. Stones were hurled at them as they went from village to village, and they wandered over the face of the earth forever . . .

ANN SHAY

Warren, Ohio

Dehydrated Bombers

Sir:

. . .You increased my education with your June 7 footnote: "Dropped from a highflying plane, the strips of foil, called 'windows,' reflected radar waves, giving the false impression to radar operators that large formations were aloft."

I had thought . . . that those strips of foil were called "window" (singular), and that we dropped them . . .to get the enemy's damned radar-controlled searchlights and guns off our actually large formations. . .It was kind of comforting to hide behind a "window" screen--with the big accurate flak laying on the tin foil below and behind us, rather than on the steel foil armor plate we were sitting on.

PINKHAM SMITH

Lieutenant Colonel, U.S.A.F.

Manchester, N.H.

P:Window, not windows, is correct; and it was used, as Lieut. Colonel Smith thought, to draw attention from actual formations, as well as to create a false impression that larger formations were aloft. Each two-ounce package of "dehydrated bomber" scattered over Germany looked to radar like three Flying Fortresses.--ED .

No Gent

Sir:

In all my life I have never met anyone so grossly discourteous as TIME. Your persistent dealings in. . .personal remarks relative to physical shortcomings mark you as grossly ill-bred. . .

Since you have pretty good sense, I read you and will continue to do so; but you are not my friend because you lack the characteristics of a gentleman: courtesy, tact, charity and kindness.

JOHN L. TOLAR

Monroe, La.

P:TIME can take it too.--ED.

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