Letters

The Equal Rights Amendment

EDITOR: Comments on "The Chain Gang and ERA'S Bitter End" (August): My reaction when I heard of the first sit-in was: "At last! Now Abigail Adams and the Suffragists can stop turning over in their graves, wondering what's been wrong with us."

Of course — as your reporter says "— the public was outraged." And again, "The ERA was a political issue that had never claimed the priority of either party."

Media and public alike had watched (as if it had nothing to do with them) in bemusement, irritation or boredom while "the girls" fought it out. But along came this Grassroots Group of Second Class Citizens, acting as if they really believed ERA had to do with women's first-class citizenship! Especially after those fasters dared go without food for 36 days. It's men who risk their lives for causes, not women. Like the soldiers in the Falklands, men dare to be heroes, not women. This country worships dead radicals, right? Of course the public was outraged.

Well, the rest of us, claiming to see ERA as a human rights issue, were put to shame by these gutsy women. They dared to do what we should have done long ago, when it became obvious that justice was to be delayed, thus denied. They put us to shame by coming back time and again, even after one legislator proved to the world that it's okay to stomp women if they don't act like ladies.

I thank the Fasters and the Chain Gang for making June 30th a day of energizing anger and rededication for so many of us. Failure now is truly impossible.

Dolores Klein
Peoria

Wills' sacred words: kudos and a quibble

EDITOR: Thank you for the excellent article by Garry Wills on words. In an age of things that hum and squeak with electronic fluency, his paean to the word — that expression of the mind molded into human sound — is a forceful reminder that only humans create meanings. However, in his zeal to impress us with the importance of words — a zeal every serious reader shares — Wills may have "o'erstepped the modesty of nature" a bit. A mime or a dancer may question whether, as Wills states, "the word [is] the original telegraphy." A painter, an architect, a musician may use other languages made up of other commonly understood words, idioms, and phrases to convey meaning.

Ironically, Wills uses a play to make his point. Although Hamlet may be the epitome of that conflict between word and action, the play meant to be performed. It is meant to be acted. Performing it demands more than the recitation of its words or the understandings of its meaning through words only. Wills asks twice in his essay, "Why read Hamlet?" The answer (twice or as many times as he cares to ask it) is that we should not read Hamlet. We should experience it in a theatre, for that is how its fullest meaning transmitted through the language of music, gesture, sculpture, painting, and the spoken word — comes "to shape human response on a larger scale," to quote Wills.

Despite this quibble. Wills' central point: that it is man's evaluative instruments which shape his ends, needs to be emphasized with at least as much zeal as Wills feels for words. Oh yes, oh yes: "[Science] cannot tell us where we ought to go." Oh yes, oh yes: "If going becomes its own excuse, then means have eclipsed the end of human life." And it is the expression of the human mind, in all the languages we label "the humanities," which will, in this electro-mechanical world of pings, buzzes, gurgles, and bangs, show us glimpses of that meaning we all crave. Wills' essay was a noble and stimulating contribution to the Humanities Series of Illiniois Issues.

Gary C. Vitale
Professor of Humanities
Springfield College in Illinois

Biomass research

EDITOR: Thank you for the opportunity to examine the issue of Illinois Issues and the article on biomass which describes the U.S. Department of Agriculture/Northern Regional Research Center program activities related to examination of plants for new crop potential and their application for energy.

Your publication serves a valuable role in bringing information of significant importance to Illinois to public attention. Format, readability and depth of treatment all contribute strongly to its usefulness.

Andrew M. Cowan
Assistant Center Director
U.S. Department of Agriculture
Northern Regional Research Center

4 | October 1982 | Illinois Issues