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As a teacher you have me guessing! How could she "find time for some seven hours of practice every day, lift weights, work out on roller skates, and run as many as 40 200-meter sprints in the afternoon under the watchful eye of a coach?" Please let us in on her big secret. When does she grade her papers? VIRGINIA COLSON DUFFIELD Garden Grove, Calif.
> Most of her classes, the Russians say, are in the morning.—ED.
Sir: Unlike participants from the U.S., the Soviet Olympic contestants are fulltime professionals heavily subsidized by their Red governments. In contrast, our contestants have other fulltime jobs to support their families; they are amateurs, and they depend for their expenses on the free-will offerings of Americans.
S. E. MARTIN Chippewa Falls, Wis.
Sir: Surely the Olympics' most outstanding winners were the real amateurs of Scandinavia. The woodcutters, office clerks, factory workers and farmers of Norway alone won 15 medals, gaining second place after Russia in the overall ratings.
VALDEMAR MATHESON Oslo, Norway
Sir: "There are some sports the Russians still can't fathom. They play terrible tennis, they swim like drain plugs." Don't be shocked if a few drain plugs win gold medals at the summer Olympic Games at Tokyo.
Soviet Drain Plug Ivan Karetnikov and Fellow Plug Georgij Prokopenko led the world last year (1963) in the breast stroke, an Olympic event, ranking first and second. The Russians also placed men in the first ten in world rank in three other Olympic events. The drain plugs won't be in Tokyo just for the bath.
ALBERT SCHOENFIELD Editor
Swimming World North Hollywood, Calif. Pop Puff
Sir: I was delighted with your "Life With Pop" article [Feb. 21]. Many friends phoned, and in all cases they were completely charmed by the color spread. Even those friends of ours who are not Pop art aficionados told us it was one of the best documents of our time.
ROBERT C. SCULL New York City
Filling Up the Green
Sir: My fellow students and I in the department of Landscape Architecture cheered your most timely article concerning encroachment on urban open spaces [Feb. 14].
The insane national trend of filling up the already woefully few parks and urban green spaces to save money in land costs will surely be paid for dearly in the confusion and congestion of future generations.
Open space can, through good design, be used positively to give structure and order to our cities. Its importance is as great as buildings or expressways. It must not be continually sacrificed for them. WILLIAM H. TISHLER Graduate School of Design Harvard University Cambridge, Mass.
Sir: To disturb one inch of our ever-popular "banks of the Charles" is to rob us and our children of one of Boston's "crowning glories." We must not become an asphalt jungle.
SARA M. PIERCE Melrose, Mass.
Sir: My encouragement to the Cambridge Planning Board and the thousands of other citizens interested in preserving what little space remains for quiet contemplation within metropolitan areas. Like so many other things, urban recreational space has been needlessly swept away in the wake of blind expediency.
DONALD F. KOSTECKI St. Louis
Musicians?