Editorials
CORRESPONDENCE Vatican Hang.ups New York, N.Y. To the Editors: I was much interested in Frank Getlein's article on "The Vaticanizing of American Art" in the September 6 issue. He...
...10016 MUrray Hill 3.2042...
...6], states clearly and fairly what I had planned to write, somewhat more acerbieally, about the Vatican Gallery of Contemporary Art...
...The only comforting thought that crossed my mind was that most Vatican visitors seem to skip the Gallery altogether...
...reserves held as part of a world grain reserve be kept in private hands...
...S15 a year...
...and three large scrapbooks of clippings tell the long and painful story of irresponsibility that has made the present crisis, in some ways, inevitable...
...But this time more is at stake than the good humor of the public over a pardon...
...Butz would be staying on, that on balance the Agriculture Department under Dr...
...is the breadbasket for much of the wider world, the needy abroad--as distinct from the affluent who are anxious only to eat better...
...113~ Winston Weathers 116 T I l E SCREEN: Colin L. Westerbeck, Jr...
...Foreign $17...
...Anyone who can enthuse over a food stamp program as a return to the free-enterprise system is not exactly the person to be heading a Department of Agriculture when people are going hungry...
...After early October's grain fiasco, President Ford was asked whether he intended to dismiss Dr...
...Bruce Cook 119 ILLUSTRATIONS: Drawing on page 85: Gardner Rea JAMES O'GARA: Editor JOHN DEEDY: Managing Editor RAYMOND A. SCHROTH: Associate Editor ANNE ROBERTSON: Editorial Assistant COLIN L. WESTERBECK, JR.: Movies JOHN FANDEL: Poetry BRIAN WICKER: Great Britain ALAIN WOODROW: Paris HENRY TEN KORTENAAR: Rome JOHN COONEY: Dublin EDWARD S. SKILLIN: Publisher JOHN BRUBAKER: Advertising Manager COMMONWEAL A Weekly Review of Public Affairs, Literature and the Arts...
...Since September 12, 18,200 of Boston's 92,000 school children have been on the move, with white children bused to predominantly black Roxbury and black children bused to predominantly white South Boston...
...Narrow political considerations were revealed, as well as a selfish concern about the impact that the grain sale would have on food prices in the United States...
...Since the same advisors who helped devise Nixon policy are around now, the worry is that the country will get more of the same in the Ford Administration, whatever the fine intentions expressed Oct...
...It would be a slow process, but is the Vatican ever in a hurry...
...One discerns no overriding concern for the poor and the aged, whose meager resources have been devastated by food costs, nor for the millions of the New York Times report whose conditions with respect to food supplies can only be described as appalling...
...A few days later, he declared through a spokesman that Dr...
...leadership in the establishment of a world food bank...
...Much of the vastly inflated Italian section can most charitably be dubbed simply gross...
...The response of the Nixon Administration to proposals like these was invariably more political and monetary than it was humanitarian...
...With funding from the local government, the Coalition continues to work for better schools, but since last June it has had to devote its energies almost exclusively to the problems of court-ordered integration, serving as a contact point and memory bank, with some staff members working as monitors in area high schools...
...But they also pointed out that busing seems the only way to focus light on the badly neglected school system...
...Here lives are at stake, and budgets...
...Senator Kennedy, for instance, has urged a food-for-peace program, the protection of energy resources for food, a quickening of food-relief efforts, and U.S...
...The action was decisive and praiseworthy, but the rationale subsequently put forth in explaining it removed much of the gloss...
...9. In this context, it is especially disturbing that President Ford should be determined to retain Dr...
...From all indications, the situation, for poor white as well as poor 25 October 1974:76...
...Butz for gross mismanagement...
...There are elements of high comedy in the two innocent ignorant envoys barging in Madison Avenue galleries to beg for some name work of art...
...and he seems singularly insensitive towards the underprivileged...
...by Commonweal Publishing Co., 232 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y...
...His article "The Vaticanizing of American Art" [Sept...
...What is needed more than ever is a comprehensive, coordinated food program that takes into consideration the needy of AmerCommonweal: 7J ica and, since the U.S...
...But that hardly mitigated circumstances---the less so since the corn, by Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz' own admission, was intended to feed livestock rather than humans, the Soviet being anxious to maintain the size and quality of beef herds for domestic meat consumption...
...The politicizing of the American seet~on is, I submit, only one major cause of the monumental gaffe...
...or of NATO nations over a new commander...
...At noon on Monday, September 30, Carolyn Ward, a director of the Coalition, walked across the Boston Common to join other black parents from Hyde Park, Jamaica Plain, and other sections of the city in front of the Massachusetts State Capitol...
...Several detailed suggestions are already on the table from citizen groups and individuals, such as Senators Kenfiedy and Humphrey...
...Butz in the key position of Secretary of Agriculture...
...The grain shipment to Russia was halted, of course, at the instance of President Ford, and the $500 million sale was eventually canceled...
...A large wall map in bold red and green lines...
...Presently, the Coalition, struggling with city-wide busing problems, faces issues as difficult as those Parker confronted a century ago...
...Second class postage paid at New York, N.Y...
...or of Spain over a newly proposed ambassador...
...I must admit that his references to me tickled my ego but I am really but one of many ignored by the Roman curia bureaucrats in their search for "modern" American art to stock the Vatican Gallery...
...This, while in parts of Bangladesh people were being reduced to one meal every other day, and while starvation gnawed at the sub-Saharan countries of Africa and threatened Indonesia and parts of Latin America...
...Printed in the USA and published weekly, except b|weekly Christmas-New Year's and June to mid.September...
...New Orleans, La...
...US and Canada...
...But this is the band-aid approach...
...Among those attending the peaceful demonstration were Gloria Joyner, director of the Task Force on Education, mainly a black and Spanish-speaking group, and Jack Robinson of the Archdiocesan Commission on Human Rights...
...like almost everyone involved, they spoke somewhat cautiously about the positive effects of busing: "Why bus kids from one school to another, when the schools are equally bad...
...Of the numerous hangers-on from the Nixon Administration, it is difficult to think of one who is personally more objectionable and professionally less suited for his assignment...
...to the silos of Russia...
...Thanks to Mr...
...He is a notorious opponent of curbs on farm exports--although the new policy is allegedly one of export control...
...Getlein, too, for his (Continued on page 95) NEWS & VIEWS: 7 4 CORRESPONDENCE: 7 3 EDITORIALS- 7 5 LAST RESORT I N BOSTON: Michael True 7 6 THE CATHOLIC NOVEL AND THE "INSIDER GOD': Robert E. Laader 711 THE SUBVERSIVE ENCYCLOPEDIA: Raymond A. Schroth 81 VERSE: John Nixon, Jr...
...It was a depressing example of President Ford's ineptness when it comes to dealing with the old Nixon "team...
...I would have enjoyed watching the ripples of surprise, perhaps anger, surely disgust, of some of the owners of these galleries...
...He outlines this sorry controversy in effective fashion...
...9 before a joint session of Congress contained some constructive proposals, including the removal of acreage limitations on certain crops and a request for a provision under Public Law 480 whereby the President could authorize food shipments to foreign countries "on national interest or humanitarian grounds...
...The neglect of Boston public schools is a familiar enough story to readers of Jonathan Kozol's Death at an Early Age: The Destruction o] the Hearts and Minds o] Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools...
...Butz "has done a good job...
...He evaded the question, saying 'Tm not going to pass judgment at this time...
...he insists, to the dismay of humanitarians generally, that any U.S...
...President Ford's economic message of Oct...
...American food prices are a matter for serious concern, but if one can read between the lines of official rhetoric, this concern is strongest for those less affected by spiraling food costs: the middle-class, middle-income shopper...
...Let President Ford act immediately...
...Busing, in other words, is a kind of last resort, not a solution itself, but a means by which the city may eventually be brought to recognize a serious problem in public education and work collectively and politically to solve it...
...Single copies SOc 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 000 FOOD, FORD AND BUTZ The New York Times' juxtapositioning of a report on malnutrition in vast parts of the world with its story on the latest Soviet grain-deal fiasco pointed up the obscenity whereby 91 million bushels of wheat and 34 million bushels of corn would have moved from the harvest fields of the U.S...
...To the Editors: Once again Frank Getlein has put us in debt...
...For the sake of hungry people everywhere, for the sake of the poor and the financially pressed, Earl Butz must go...
...The prestige of the Vatican in these matters had better be protected by others more knowledgeable in contemporary art and who can search for prime examples of first-rate art among the many fine artists to be found in all parts of the United States...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 THE BUSING CONTROVERSY _9 RESORT IN BOSTON The City-Wide Educational Coalition, founded in 1971 as a volunteer citizens group for quality education in Boston public schools, is housed in a building dedicated to the memory of Theodore Parker, the great 19th-century abolitionist...
...Their purpose was to express support for their children, now caught in the middle of the turmoil over busing, in the nation's oldest school system...
...His departure seems a necessary precondition to any kind of enlightened and effective food program...
...Embarrassment and shame were my main feelings on visiting the deplorable new Gallery...
...Copyright ~ 1974 Commonweal Publishing Co., Inc...
...113 QUICK, WATSON, THE NEEDLE" Mark Taylor 115 RECTIFYING THE COST OF FREEDOM: Richard L. Schoenw,/d 117 BOOKS: Wallace Fow/ie, Daniel Stern...
...MAURICE LAVANOUX President, The Society for the Renewal of Christian Art, Inc...
...The grain deal, at today's prices, was still only half the $1 billion sale made to Russia in 1972...
Vol. 101 • October 1974 • No. 4
