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We have always had dozens of robins on this lawn and other dozens on the lawns between here and home. This year four showed up on this lawn, two on the lawns between here and home. A cat got one of the four and now a third has disappeared. The lovely mountain bluebird nested everywhere in this town and the surrounding hamlets and farms. I can't vouch for anywhere but my daily route—but here we have exactly one pair.
We have feeders at home. Every year prior to the last two we fed dozens of juncos, chickadees, white-crowned sparrows and the like. And up here at the courthouse, I fed other dozens on snowy days. This year there's not a solitary one. I haven't seen or heard a meadowlark in this neighborhood. East of here, across the divide, the bird population has always been ten times—at least visibly—what it is on this side. On May 18th, I drove over there. Not a single horned lark, sage, field or song sparrow, nor a solitary pippet. Driving on above Alder, I stopped at the mouth of Water Gulch, got out and walked up to it a few rods where I knew that if all was normal I would find hundreds of these birds. I raised not a solitary bird.
My eyes and ears tell me that Rachel Carson's Silent Spring has arrived.
ELI B. CHRISTENSEN Philipsburg, Mont.
Sir: I am grateful for your interest in clean water and in helping to make the public aware of areas of pollution [Aug. 1]. However, as mayor of the city of Erie, I take exception to your inference that all of Lake Erie is a cesspool. We are a tourist area, and Erie's beaches and boating facilities are open, and have been open for many years. Last year more than three and one-half million people visited Erie's Presque Isle State Park. Sixty lifeguards man eleven beaches on the park. These beaches are tested weekly by the state and county health departments, and ten are open and have been open for bathing.
Louis J. TULLIO Mayor Erie, Pa.
∎ TIME did not mean to imply that the city of Erie has unsafe beaches. We stated that only three of Lake Erie's U.S. beaches are rated safe for swimming but did not specify that one of the three is Presque Isle State Park, which is subdivided into eleven beaches. That ten of these are safe attests to the city's positive efforts to control pollution.
No Dolce Vita
Sir: You speak of Prince Souvanna Phouma "vacationing in France" [Aug. 1] while the North Vietnamese invasion in Laos is again making headlines. After a trip to London, where he met again with Prime Minister Wilson for his country's sake, and before going to Paris to meet with President Pompidou and some members of the new French government for the same reason, the Prime Minister of Laos spent exactly three weeks on a cure for stomach troubles at one of the quietest and most remote of French spas, Plombieres in the Vosges. This was no dolce vita on the Riviera with parties and yachts.
PRINCESS MOUNE SOUVANNA PHOUMA STIEGLITZ Marseille
Getting the Vibrations