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Thanks to your article "Hearts and Minds," about the mental fog that can set in after heart-bypass surgery, friends and family are now looking at me for signs of cognitive impairment [MEDICINE, Feb. 19]. Five years ago, I had one quadruple bypass that was botched and six months later mended with a double bypass. Today, here I am, and apart from a lifelong hatred of the New York Times crosswords, I am fine. Maybe you should hold off publishing articles like this one until all the facts are known. Until then, Dick Cheney and I will be closely watched to see if I forget my keys or he forgets a meeting in the Oval Office. GERTRUDE VAN HOOYDONCK Orient, N.Y.
Fifteen years ago, I underwent quadruple-bypass surgery. Last summer I had a second bypass plus a valve job. I have fantasized about Kim Basinger for years. However, now I am overwhelmed by an inordinate desire to sing in French and solve quadratic equations. Could this be due to cognitive decline? LARRY VERGA Avon Lake, Ohio
Sounds like perfectly normal behavior to us--except maybe the fantasies about Kim Basinger.
The Tom-and-Nicole Split
Your item on the breakup of the marriage of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman [PEOPLE, Feb. 19] was suffused with a cynicism so vile it bordered on the pathological. Your assumption seemed to be that the marriage, because it was between two rich and famous people, was devoid of all meaning. There was not the slightest hint that these people's lives (and those of their children) are anything but fodder for tabloid speculation and ridicule. You made fun of the headlines the breakup has produced in other publications, but you had no right to assume superiority when your own reporting was so vapid, meanspirited and soulless. ROBERT E. RYDER Savannah, Ga.
We'll try to infuse our celebrity gossip with more soulful sincerity in the future.
Prescient Pop Song
Your item about Russell Crowe's song Wendy [PEOPLE, Feb. 19] was laughably incorrect and old news to fans of his band 30 Odd Foot of Grunts. The song was written in 1995, well before Crowe met Meg Ryan, so there is no way it could be about his relationship with her as you implied. Maybe next time you'll do a little more groundwork. CHARLOTTE OSMAN New York City
Well, you know how it is. Any excuse to run a picture of Russell Crowe.
Arctic Pipe Dreams
Can we not leave one last place undesecrated by our insatiable lust for oil [NATION, Feb. 19]? If the U.S.'s national security depends on the exploration and drilling of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as one lobbyist would have us believe, shouldn't the country become less dependent on this nonrenewable source of energy? A majority of Americans responding to your poll opposed drilling in ANWR, yet oilmen George W. Bush and Dick Cheney will pursue ramming this exploration down America's throat. ANWR is not the solution to our energy problems; conservation and development of renewable sources of power are. JAMES BELL Los Angeles