CORRESPONDENCE
CORRESPONDENCE Soap Bubb/es Saratoga Springs, N.Y. To the Editors: I read with delight Peter Steinfels's piece on Soap, mutterin& Amen, Amen, between each sentence [Sept. 30]. I would...
...He begged to be freed from 'this nightmare in which we are all prisoners...
...W. F. WOLFF Saxtons River, Vt...
...monthly in advance for more than three times...
...The soft technologies, such as solar and organic conversion, wind-hydraulic systems, the recently developed fluidized-bed system for burning coal, as well as conservation and co-generation provide a diversified, diffused and more efficient answer to our energy future, according to Lovins...
...And for some four dollars a six-pack, too...
...To the Editors: Regarding Raymond A. 8chroth's review of The Taster's Guide to Beer [16 September 1977]: Adolph Coors's support of "right-wing causes" may well be extravagant, but it's hardly necessary to deplore the man's politics in order to dislike his beer, probably the most overrated potable on the market...
...But familiar or not, old or older, the essays of the master can be read and reread...
...I only ask that you present arguments that refute his careful, forceful logic, before you dismiss the Clamshell Alliance and other nuclear opponents as "knee-jerk...
...Mtcre4|ms from Vet...
...This note cannot begin to do iustice to Mr...
...The spontaneous growth of voluntary, concerned citizen groups should be cause for rejoicing...
...White...
...and the assumption that nuclear war will mean the utter destruction of the warring powers and a high Commonweal: 739 on which these reflections are based, each yields a variety of interpretations and not all yield easily...
...Some, like "The Patience of Job in Detroit, Michigan," '~rhe Whale's Tale" and especially "Eve and the Bible Salesman" (the book's original working title) are marvelous short stories that would have had Flannery O'Connor slapping her peacocks with delight...
...So Orwellian is the situation that some policymakers actually regard a comprehensive nuclear-survival civilian defense plan as a negative factor threatening the fragile balance of terror...
...300 N. Zecb Read, Ame Arbor, /dick...
...Over 2,600 pastors rely on U M P. Why not you...
...k~c, three times: 63c, six times...
...Open houses, speeches, the "Atom Man" brochure and other gimmicks have been followed by table games pitting beneficent, public spirited utility leaders against environmentalists...
...Second c/ass postage paid at New Fork, N.Y...
...News has reported that one municipal electric company actually charged costs of buying and distributing the industry's "Energy Environment Game" to a Federal Power Commission account...
...60c, twelve times...
...White worries in the foreword, written last April, that New York now suffers from an undetected brain tumor...
...espousal of the technological fix is no mortal sin, but the imperative that we not "retreat before" the problems of nuclear energy is a little too much...
...The Unified Magazine Program, a service of Paulist Press, offers a convenient and accessible parish reading rack system that attracts interest, appeals to the budget-conscious pastor and offers a choice of timely and informative Catholic periodicals for everyone...
...To associate this group with "the dark ages" and "knee-jerk opposition" is as fine a disservice to reality as anything you have printed before...
...Classified payable with order...
...Choose from 18 different Catholic magazines and newspapers . . . pay only for copies sold . . . don't return unsold copies.., feel confident that our "theft-proof" envelope system virtually insures payment.., escape the problem of keeping track of individual subscriptions with automatic shipping and billing...
...Ask the guy behind the counter...
...White, Harper & Row, $12.50...
...soft technology debate...
...We can aid its efforts and concentrate our own...
...MARK TAYLOR (Continued on page 765) NEWS dk VIEWS: ?38 CORRESPONDENCE: 7~3 EDITORIAL: 739 W4~IIlNGTON IlEPOIlT: I l e l m s m e n , What Quarru...
...Like most books of collected essays, this one tends to be a jumble, and White himself doesn't help in the sorting out when he datelines some essays and not others, and when he provides the book with no perfectly chronological sections...
...To the Editors: Your editorialist on "The Senate and Energy" cannot have read the Foreign Agairs article of a year ago, "Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken" by Amory B. Lovins...
...The writer says "No one minimizes the dangers in nuclear-energy development" (not true) but seems to feel they are easily conquered...
...Here Is New York," for instance, moved from Holiday to the Book-of-the-Month Club, a 1949 selection...
...That piece, and his subsequent book, Soft Energy Paths, have changed the terms of the nuclear vs...
...reap the benefits of a more informed laity...
...The ghetto kid in for murder one becomes at one point the son of a crusty old Irishman...
...White is a very special writer: a stylist with the informality of a general-store keeper...
...Carter has assumed that an uncompromisingly sound economy was the foundation of a decent egalitarianism...
...a sophisticate with the polish of the slicker who just dropped in from the big city...
...COMMONWEAL, 232 Madison Ave, New York, N.Y...
...14] on "The Senate and Energy" were composed by a certain Father Greeley...
...Cepyri~t O. lg77 Cemmeawee/ Psb//sblRg Co., Inc.--US and Canada: $17 a year...
...Dwight Macdonald, Wilfrid Sheed, maybe one or two more...
...Box 121, JenHntown, Pa...
...Wind chargers for home electric generators were still common in the west into the second quarter of this century and windmills gave ample running water for cow barns and farmhouses within thirty miles of New York City...
...000 0 0 @ 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 THE WORLD OF SURVIVAL A paradox of the nuclear-weapons age is the way the United States goes about advancing war capabilities while negotiating arms treaties, at the same time--unlike adversary superpower Russiammaking minimum effort to prepare the general public for life in a post-nuclear-war environment...
...07446 Commonweal: 765 Rockaway, or spent idyllic summers on the roads between Wimiham, Hendersonville, Cairo and East Durham can tell you that Father Schroth is mis-informed or has been subjected t o ' t h e avalanche of publicity cranked out by the institutions in question...
...These two threats have recently come to greater public consciousness, not only among persons living in the shadow of Vermont Yankee and other plants...
...anti-nuclear debate...
...make it convenient for your parishioners to buy Catholic periodicals . . . draw attention to the service with announcements from the pulpit and in the parish bulletin.., subscribe for this service from a supplier who requires minimum participation from you and takes away the fi.aancial risk to your parish...
...I f even a fraction of funds which now support weaponry and nuclear projects were provided for alternative energy research and development, with our contemporary scientific knowledge and laboratories, we might live to see solar heaters on urban rooftops and windmills on the plains and in the sea...
...Is there a scrap of evidence that wind, water and solar power, to say nothing of the garbage power we have not yet tried in this country, cannot be developed on massive scale...
...Specie/ two-Fear rate $29.50...
...As for these essays, some will be familiar...
...If torturers are dehumanized as they learn to deny any impulse to pity, sympathy, or compassion, must we not agree that we are equally dehumanized by knowing that torture exists and failing to act...
...JOHN VEaVY 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 CORRESPONDENCE (Continued trom page 739) Everett, Wash...
...Lovins's brilliant analysis of all the major points in the hard vs...
...To the Editors: To begin a protest with a grain of sympathy, it is ironic that your October 14th editorial on Senatorial and Executive energy acrobatics went to press just before the White House Advisory Council On Environmental Quality report came out, with its recommendation for a moratorium on building new nuclear plants until ways of protecting against reactor accidents, and of safely disposing of nuclear wastes, are discovered...
...White has been sending the world pleasant, deceptively profound essays from middle Maine, and these have delighted, moved, influenced a couple generations of readers of the Atlantic, Harper's, .Holiday and most especially The New Yorker...
...I don't know to what Degree of Aesthetic Acrobats this raises one who can hunt with the hounds and run with the hare, eating his cake and having it, while balancing water on both shoulders, but it has got to be a very special one...
...Twelve words minimum...
...41106...
...Director of Social S e r v i c e s The Diocese of Catholic Charities of Youngstown Ohio is seeking a Director of Socla Services wlth experience in social work and admlnistration and an M.S.W, or equivalent degree Respons bi ties include supervls ng funding, monitoring, evaluating and giving technical assistance to the seven regional social service agencies within the six-county diocese...
...Finally, some of the essays are from less popular journals and are just now finding their way between hard covers...
...Allow Four to Six Weeks for Change of Address and Enclose Label...
...Also must participate in regional, state and national meetings relevant to the Catholic Charities program...
...New branches have sprung up across the country...
...In New England several organizations have arisen, some state-centered, some 25 November 1977:766 regional, some with individual focus, all concerned about nuclear dangers, all working in high degree of cooperation...
...A Ford Foundation report said that "Added safety features can introduce new risks of their own...
...His (your...
...Unified Magazine Program 545 Island Road Ramsey, N.J...
...Natioaal Serials Data Program No.: ISSN 0010-3330...
...S/sg/o copy 7So...
...Is it time to consider the alternative - - t h a t an uncompromisingly decent egalitarianism may be the foundation of a sound economy...
...As he concedes in his foreword, a mild confusion may result...
...Since the 1930s, E.B...
...He does nod to two evils in nuclear operation specified in the Council On Environmental Quality report, the everpresent danger of accident against which there is no protection, and the fact that radioactive wastes with long, long longevity are still piling up while there is still no known means of safe disposal...
...there's hardly a suburban garage sale where you don't run into a copy...
...the mystical union of all felons...
...THOMAS E. QUIOLEY Es~Ys oF E.B...
...Forget the politics and invest in Heinekens--for less money...
...Laber tells of an Uruguayan army officer who smuggled out photographs of victims in whose torture he had participated...
...E.B...
...The questions the Alliance raises are not ones best answered by knee-jerk scare phrases but by a consideration of the staggering technological, military and economic problems associated with nuclear energy, the social matrix within which these problems must be solved, and the necessary role, in all this, of power-seeking, capricious, and, above all, fallible human beings...
...But the glosses on Elijah, Elisha, Daniel and David invite the reader to pause-----often--and ponder...
...Wade, The Legal Principles of the Founding Fathers and and the Supreme Court by Edward J, Melvin, C.M.--$1 to Pro Life Coalition of Pennsylvania, P.O...
...I would like to add a comment on an unmentioned feature of ABC's defense more repellent to me than all the others...
...I suspect that most members of the Clamshell Alliance (to which I do not belong) have given far more thought to the consequences and problems of nuclear energy than your guest editor has given to any serious matter...
...Having thus uprooted the Green Bay Tree with one mighty wrench and prompted the Lord, this dextrous executive assured us we would see, before the end, for example, the unfaithful wife suffer from her infidelity...
...Yours in the continuing search for truth, DAVID A. ]~/CCOURT Professor of History and Political Science Everett Community College F v a n k ~ t e t n ' a MmsJnter Park Forest, IlL To the Editors: Although there is no way to prove it, my guess is that the final paragraphs of your recent editorial [Oct...
...John DEEDY is Managing Editor of Commonweal...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 REVIEWERS WILLIAM B. HIXSON, JR., teaches recent American history at Michigan State University...
...It has brought members of the general public, university scientists and distinguished participants in the legal profession together, for education and action...
...It is sad to confuse grass roots with "vigilante...
...Foreign S33.S0 Commo~voel Is Indexed In Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, Catholic PoriedJca/ Index, and Ihwk Review D/geol...
...He thinks a "de facto moratorium," reflected in decreasing orders for nuclear plants, has already begun...
...The hard technologies, including nuclear power, require vast expenditures of capital, enormous risks (not only environmental damage, nuclear proliferation, qentralization, etc., but they may not be economically feasible...
...Reply to Director of Catholic Charities, 22S Elm Street, Youngsfown, Ohlo 44S03...
...With equal logic we should learn to live with Frankenstein's monster, in the hope that it will run errands for us...
...g24, to date available tkroogb Ueivor~ty M/crealms...
...Lovins's discussion of the "soft" technologies-"flexible, resilient, sustainable and benigu"--which match energy quality to end-use needs in a way that is impossible for the centralized, wasteful, capital intensive nuclear and other "hard" technologies...
...Commonweal: 767...
...The Clamshell Alliance, at which your editorial takes a special swipe, began with young people who were joined by hundreds of others, kids to graybeards, in an open, well announced demonstration against beginning construction of the Seabrook plant...
...JOSEPHINE JACOBSEN Lager, rhfthmB South Nyack, N.Y...
...My protest is for the editorial writer's apparent unawareness of what goes on about energy issues in the boondocks, particularly the gratuitous pot shots of the last two paragraphs...
...Printed In the USA and pub//shod b/-weok/y by Commonweal Publishing Co...
...The Alliance (of which I am not a member) now intends to concentrate on antipollution education...
...The impulse, however, is to debunk the Kahns and proceed on official levels as though the unthinkable were impossible...
...For box numbe, add 60c per insertion...
...5-/ TRE TIME TIIAT WAS T I l E SIXTIES: William B. Hixson, Jr...
...To the Editors: Many thanks for the Raymond Schroth review of The Taster's Guide to Beer by Michael A. Weiner.'Any additional information on that happiest of pasttimes is a welcome addition to any library...
...HENRY W~'~NER nOWDEN is an associate professor of Religion at Douglass-Rutgers University in New Jersey...
...Salut...
...Any person who has attended doubleheaders at the old "Garden" and then followed the crowds to Gilhooleys or AI Mullers, or done the Third Avenue bit from Joe Kings to the Lorelei, or followed the Green Wave on March 17th up Fifth and then down Third, or experienced the Boardwalk from Beach 98th to 116th at old Put a Catholic newstand in your parish...
...The foolhardiness of not planning for the day after doomsday is scored by Bruce Douglas Clayton in a recent Bulletin o] Atomic Scientists, the journal with the clock in its masthead warning that the world, figuratively speaking, stands at nine minutes to midnight, nuclear doomsday...
...Clayton challenges two popular myths: the assumption that somehow the arms race will be brought to an end short of nuclear weapons ever being used, a delusionary idea, in his opinion, given the historical proclivity of nations to apply to war the weapons at hand...
...The civilian population, it seems, must be held vulnerable and uninformed about coping in a post-doomsday world lest the nation be suspect of plotting a preemptive attack...
...The most sophisticated, the New England Coalition Against Nuclear Pollution, has made large achievements in few years...
...For far too long have I had to endure the exaggerated claims of Fordham, Georgetown, Bonaventure, Holy Cross and that place in Indiana...
...The only "knee-jerking" at the non-violent Seabrook demonstration came from the Governor of New Hampshire and the Manchester Union Leader and their followers, at enormous cost to the New Hampshire budget...
...Sometimes the reader will find me in the city when be thinks I am in the country, and the other way around...
...The book is, like the Book of Job, like Berrigan, "angry and scandalous...
...Sll MOOIKS: Barbara Mutkoski, Walter Arnold, Claire Hahn, Henry Warner Bowden, Thomas E. Quigley, John Deedy ?59 ILL4[]STIIATIONS: on ]rent cover and with articles about Rome, courtesy o] the Italian State Tourist Department JAMES O'GARA: Editor JOHN DEEDY: Managing Editor EAYMONO A. SCHROTN: Associate Editor ANNE M. RO|ERTSON: gd/toriet Assishset COLIN L. WESTERRBCK, JR.: Mov/es JOHN FANDIL: Poetry FRANK GLrTLEIN: Wasblngton BRIAN WICKER: @~ Erita~ ALAIN WOODROW: Paris HENRY TEN KORTENAAR: Rome DESMOND FISHER: Dub/In EDWARD S. SKILLIN: Pnb//skor RUTH E. TAYLOR: Advertising Manager Star: IJNDA F. KAYLER, PAMELA J. FITZGERALD, HARRIETTIE BALSKY COMMONWEAL 23| MADISON AYE., NEW YORK, N.Y...
...therefore, in an age of planning no planning is necessary for what, God forbid!, could be the greatest disaster in history...
...It just takes hanging in there for a few more episodes, while the ratings tick by...
...CI.AmE RAHN is an assistant professor of English at Fordham University...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Steinfeis (Cont...
...THOMAS E. QUIOLEY is on the staff of the Division of Latin America, U.S...
...During the week your editorial appeared, at a public hearing conducted by the Vermont Board of Health in the state capital, one of the nuclear engineers who last year resigned from General Electric in protest, said that the life span of nuclear reactors, after which they must be dismantled, is likely to be fifteen years instead of forty...
...John's a distant second...
...19046...
...C I a s s i f i e iI RATES: 70c a word, one time...
...Veterans of the activities listed will attest that the best beer drinkers ever created are from Manhattan College with the followers from St...
...I'd hate to accuse Commonweal of being "kneejerk nuke...
...Viewpoint Historical viewpoint worth reading, Roe vs...
...Some essays are dated--again "Here Is New York," which was written when the subway cost a dime (up, alas, from a nickel) and when the city could be cited for its solidarity and continuity...
...And equally clearly full of hope...
...Amnesty has succeeded in freeing thousands from imprisonment and torture because it focuses its efforts, eschews the abstract, and does not weary...
...10016...
...Other reports quoted underscored the inability of nuclear operations to control unforeseen occurrences...
...Such sources may be able to benefit fife and environmental quality for a nation and world, not just for the small minority of people who can choose to live in relative selfsufl]ciency, growing food organically and harvesting their own fuel...
...The latter, though they be a peculiarly privileged group, do live in the late twentieth century, economically but not quaintly...
...They are sure to produce, as Lovins predicts, "a world of subsidies, $100-billion bailouts, oligopolies, regulations, nationalization, eminent domain, corporate statism...
...On shoestring contributions it has become a consultation and educational resource for more than this locality...
...Your discussion of "quaint" alternatives "geared to life in another century" has no relevance to Mr...
...There is nothing "quaint" about solar energy nor about other sources of renewable energy...
...Foreign $19...
...There are occasional unofficial articles and books, notably Herman Kahn's, which remind that nuclear war is not synonymous with human extermination, that there will be life after The Bomb, and that people would be prudent to be preparing now for surviving the unthinkable...
...MAaaOmE MUm, m, Pittsburgh, Pa...
...stuck to the Democratic platform and Carter's campaign promises, the private government would have been far more likely to come to terms...
...it's also, like him, full of irony and wit...
...Some new angles have appeared, despite the sudden energetic efforts of nuclear industry public relations teams to "educate" the public on nuclear safety and economy...
...Salary is negotiable...
...The talented essayist can be read for the sheer beauty of the sentences, and there are few essayists around with the talent of E.B...
...Cain's letters from the joint are troubling...
...Write today for our catalog...
...The Nuclear Regulatory Agency had given permission for ocean waters to be sucked in, heated and dumped back, on behalf of cooling towers...
...an observer with the wit add candor o f the sage by t h e putbellied stove...
...One of the ABC oMcials, whose name I have fortunately forgotten, managed to combine his passionate appeals for aesthetic creativity and freedora, with the sanctimonious assurance that, in the long run, (and long run seemed his mot iustr "no one who did anything wrong would be shown to profit by it...
...WmrrE, by E.B...
...Never mind...
...WALTEn ARNOLO, former editorial director of Liveright, is a free-lance writer and editor...
...Here are 31 of those essays, 22 of them from The New Yorker, White's literary home...
...BARBt~A MUTICOSrO is an assistant professor of English at Bergen College in New Jersey...
...But, this is nothing...
...It's the secret of the trade, and the trademark of E.B...
...9 enjoy the feeling that your parishioners are reading Catholic literature again...
...MOLLY RUSH Director, The Thomas Merton Center 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Abigail McCarthy ( e o n ' t ) to work in well-equipped torture chambers lined with modern acoustical tiles and spattered with blood, vomit, and urine...
...the son, no longer in drag, but with a perfectly weU-cut suit, and a girl of his very own...
...In fifteen years they become "too impermeated with radioactivity to permit proper maintenance...
...Catholic Conference in Washington...
...The least commendable and least justifiable aspect of this editorial was its unprovoked slap at the Clamshell Alliance...
...They will be quite new to most readers and thoroughly enjoyable to all...
...However, I must take issue with the reviewer's final paragraph...
...White...
...1001'6 Telephoae: |312} MU 3-2042 A review et hb/Ic Ah/rs, L/toratore and tko Arts...
...Frank Getlein ?40 CAPITAL PUNISll~IENT---OR SUICIDE?: Lois Spear 742 TOIITUM AGAIN: Abigail McCarthy -/43 ON LEAVING IlOME: .tames V. Schall ' / 4 4 ~POilTEil AT TigE VATICAN: Desmond O'Grady ? S l GOVEIINMENT BY" WHAT PEOPLE?: Peter Stein/els -/5@ T i l e SCIlEEN: Colin L. Westerbeck, Jr...
Vol. 104 • November 1977 • No. 24
