Culture Capital
Sir: Cheers to Mrs. Buff Chandler and the Music Center. Cheers to Los Angeles, the culture capital of the West!
DOMINIQUE de LEON
Nicosia, Cyprus
Sir: Mrs. Chandler could be elected mayor of Los Angeles at the drop of a baton. But just now she's much too busy getting done the things that no mere mayor could do.
D. LYNN SPEICHER Los Angeles
Sir: Please take a memo to L.B.J.: "Suggest you draft Buff Chandler for your poverty program."
DOROTHEA J. BOHMAN Southfield, Mass.
Sir: As long as my neck never looks like Mrs. Chandler's in the cover painting, I shall always be grateful I never made TIME magazine.
BARBARA BURBANK Honolulu
Sir: I think the new opera house in Los Angeles is very lovely, and I also think you were very kind to the Chandlers, past, present and future, but regardless of how much culture they pour into Los Angeles, it will never get beyond a cow town.
WILLIAM R. HAMMER San Francisco
Sir: Re the Los Angeles Music Center: it is to be devoutly hoped that (excuse me) the new auditorium seating design (pardon me, sir) with its long rows of seats unbroken by aisles (I'm sorry, may I just get by here . . . thank you) will encourage those tiresome Los Angeles latecomers (oops, sorry!) to mend their ways and start arriving on time. (Pardon me, could you folks all move down one seat?)
MARIAN CARPENTER North Hollywood, Calif.
Sir: We wish to express our pleasure with the cover story, but would like to point out an omission in the caption of the two illustrations of Clowes Memorial Hall, which was built in memory of my father. You name John Johansen as the architect. In fact he worked in association with Evans Woollen.
ALLEN W. CLOWES Chairman
Clowes Memorial Hall Advisory Council Indianapolis
Sir: Does TIME know that two architects designed Clowes Hall?
EVANS WOOLLEN Indianapolis
Sir: In your coverage of the national cultural scene you mention the important support given Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts by the Rockefeller Foundation. Please note that the contribution of the Rockefeller Foundation is $15,050,000, not $50 million, as reported. This Foundation is among the thousands of donors-individual, foundation and corporate-participating in the center's financing.
HENRY E. BESSIRE Director of Development Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts New York City
McNamara's Ax
Sir: In evaluating Secretary McNamara's recent decision to eliminate the Army Reserve [Dec. 18], Congress will do well to remember that this genius is not absolute. He was the commander of Ford when they produced the Edsel!
ARTHUR ROSENBLATT Boston
Sir: The estimated savings, with no sacrifice to our defense capability, sounds fine, but it is, after all, the Defense Department's own estimate and open to challenge. Many people with knowledge of the actual facts do not agree with it.
Take the case of the Springfield, Mass., Armory, the oldest arsenal in the U.S., cradle of American industrial small arms, authorized by George Washington and the Third Continental Congress, now being phased out as an economy move. Economy? Watch prices of small arms skyrocket if the armory is forced out of the business it knows so well!