Rounding the World

Sir / I have an open mind about psychic phenomena [March 4], but let us not stop exploring new ideas and thoughts, even some of the most outlandish ones. If we had stopped in days of old and said majestically, "We know it all." life wouldn't be so much fun. The world would still be flat, the seas beset by monsters, and the moon would still be cheese.

KAY RANFON_________?????????????????????? Salem, N.H.

Sir / You quote Magician Charles Reynolds as saying. "When evaluating the research, we have found that the researcher's will to believe is all powerful." To be fair, you should also have cited the skeptic's will to disbelieve.

A physicist of note once told me that he found he had an overpowering urge to abandon a project of psychic research (concerned with reverse time) just when he felt that he was near a breakthrough. He had a panicky need to back away from the abyss before he was forced to confront its terrifying implications. He said: "I was scared witless that I was about to look into the face of God."

ELOISE YERGER Paris

Sir / Man needs religion and ritual, and the recent cult of parapsychology has produced an impressive clergy.

The need to believe is as dominant a factor in this so-called enlightened age of ours as it has ever been. To quote Anton La Vey, who spearheaded the contemporary Satan boom, "Barnum said that a sucker is born every minute; with today's population explosion, there are two born every minute." Your article on the psychics would indicate that indeed a third is born every minute: a parapsychologist.

JOHN M. KINCAID Minister of Information Church of Satan San Francisco

Sir / About talking to plants, my advice as author of five gardening books is this: talk, sing, croon to your plants--but also water, fertilize, cultivate, control insects and disease, provide proper light, temperature, humidity. If your plants talk back, then see a psychiatrist.

SAMM SINCLAIR BAKER Mamaroneck, N.Y.

Sir / Your story on psychic phenomena used my name and mentioned my book in such a way as to insinuate that I consider the phenomena hoaxes.

Since I researched the psychic healers of the Philippines for several years and wrote objectively about their unexplained art, I can say with authority that the phenomenon is genuine most of the time--unexplained, but genuine.

Irrational skepticism is as firmly based in ignorance as irrational belief.

TOM VALENTINE Chicago

Sir / Thank you for clearing the air on the controversial subject "The Psychics." In my travels around the world performing as a mentalist, I have always closed my performances with the words. "To those who believe, no explanation is necessary; to those who do not believe, no explanation is possible."

Until science adopts the same rigorous testing procedures that are applied to any other investigation, the pursuit of any possible "psi" effect will meet with serious and legitimate objections. Miracle workers will continue to produce "paranormal" ghost pictures, bend nails and float objects in midair. Scientists will be confused until they realize that they are incapable of detecting chicanery without expert assistance.

DUNNINGER Cliffside Park, N.J.

Need for Clean Sweep

Sir / Thank God for the courageous voters of the Fifth Congressional District of Michigan [March 4].

The only good thing that can come out of Watergate is a thorough housecleaning in Washington.

(THE REV.) WENDELL L. HARDER American Falls, Idaho

Sir / I am a Democrat and feel strongly that President Nixon has abused the trust the American people gave him, as well as bungled the mandate he claims to have received from them. However, it would be detrimental to the future stability of our form of government if the "backlash" from Watergate ushered in a landslide of Democrats in Congress or in state and local government. To elect a party rather than the best-qualified person would be to compound our misery.

GENE FRANCESCHINl Denver

Import a President?

Sir / Jonathan Bingham (D.. N.Y.) and a vast number of the common people are calling for a constitutional amendment that would allow a certain Secretary of State, as well as any other naturalized aliens, to be eligible for the presidency [March 4]. Has the doubt of the American people and their representatives risen to the point that they are thinking of importing Presidents?

DAN BOGOSIAN Waukegan, Ill.

Sir / There is much to be said for the repeal of Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, which requires that the President be a "natural-born" citizen. And yet, if the German constitution in 1933 had contained a similar provision. Hitler, being Austrian-born, would not have been eligible to become Chancellor.

What a lovely thought. ERIKA LITTLE Chevy Chase, Md.

Heart Surgery

Sir / "Overdoing Heart Surgery?" [March 4] does a disservice to the patient who has had or is considering surgical treatment for coronary-artery disease. Dr. Henry Russek's contention that "more lives have been lost through bypass surgery than have been saved by it" is unfounded.

Dr. Russek suggests that the coronary patient accepts the risks of surgery in lieu of medical therapy that includes weight reduction, tobacco abstinence, medications and the like. The simple truth is that almost every coronary patient has had a trial of medical therapy, has given up tobacco and has reduced his body weight before being accepted for surgical treatment.

Before a patient can be considered for coronary surgery he must undergo coronary arteriography to determine his precise needs. The surgeon knows the extent and precise location of the coronary disease; he relies on arteriography repeated a year later to determine the success or failure of the surgical procedure. The group of 102 patients touted by Russek were diagnosed, treated and evaluated by the same physician without the benefit of selective coronary arteriography.

Whatever claims of success are made must be considered personal rather than scientific.

DONALD B. EFFLER, M.D. Chief, Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery Cleveland Clinic Foundation Cleveland

Wrestling with the Scriptures

Sir / Even if Garner Ted Armstrong of the Worldwide Church of God is guilty as charged [March 4], what grounds does that give to evaluate his church? Do we think that the Constitution of the United States is diminished because so many top men have failed to uphold it?

And as to tithing or divorce questions--well, dissenters are wrestling not with "Armstrongism" but with the Scriptures.

That's the way it is. JOHN CAPS Springfield, Mass.

Solzhenitsyn (Contd.)

Sir / Your article on Solzhenitsyn [Feb. 25] failed to explain the significance of why the Soviets chose to deport him via the Federal Republic of Germany: by doing so it would be "returning the traitor to his ideological homeland."

To xenophobic Russia's unsophisticated people, this can only imply that if he were not in fact a "Nazi," why should he thus depart for Germany? The Germans were of course too flattered (and perhaps humanitarian or naive) to understand or question the advisability of accepting Solzhenitsyn's deportation.

HENRY A. GRIFFIN Coburg, West Germany

Sir / The Estonian lawyer to whom Solzhenitsyn attributes his conversion from Marxism to democratic principles was Arnold Susi (named in The Gulag Archipelago), a member of the last legitimate Estonian government on national soil. He could not make it to freedom abroad in 1944 when the Russians again invaded Estonia, and was subsequently arrested by the Soviets solely because he was a well-known national figure. He was sent to prisons and labor camps in Russia, where he met Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

JUHAN KANGUR Bridgeton, N.J.

Moral Support for 34 Years

Sir / It is not my habit to write to papers after reading reviews of my books. But after coming across the one by Martha Duffy on my novel The Eye of the Storm [Jan. 14], in which she refers to me as "living in Sydney with several dogs and a male housekeeper," I feel I must draw your attention to an incorrect, and I should have thought gratuitous, biographical detail. The distinguished and universally respected man who has given me his friendship and moral support over a period of 34 years has never been a housekeeper. I am that, and shall continue playing the role at least till I am paralyzed; it keeps me in touch with reality.

PATRICK WHITE Sydney, Australia

House-Spouse

Sir / Concerning your article on "Men of the House" [Feb. 18]: the terms "housewife" and "househusband" are all right if you insist on being specific, but "house-spouse" has much to offer as an all-purpose replacement.

For example, last year my wife was the house-spouse, but this year I am the house-spouse. Both of us get the best of both worlds this way.

As one of the "very scant, and very hardy few," I think being a house-spouse during alternate years is a great idea.

WOODROW DENHAM Indianola, Wash.

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