Censorship Reverberations

    The action of Principal Walter Larsh of Venice High School in banning "The New Pocket Anthology of American Verse" from an 11th grade English classroom is reverberating among teachers.

    The book, available at drugstores and newsstands for 50 cents, was withdrawn on the complaint of Mrs. Theodore Herin, who was backed, she said, by two Venice ministers and the head of a civic organization.  She contended three poems by Walt Whitman and one by Ezra Pound in it were unfit for 11th graders.

    Connoisseurs in the realm of censorship might be interested in the fact that there are more than 500 poems in the collection, arranged in alphabetical order according to author, and unless a person knew what he was looking for he would do considerable reading, very good reading, too, before getting to Ezra and Walt.  Incidentally, the four poems Mrs.Herin considered obscene were not among the 50 assigned by the teacher, Mrs. Florence Russell.

    A UCLA PROF says, "I'm stunned and delighted by the thought that a student could be suspected of reading beyond an assignment.  But now a teacher doing a decent job of teaching American literature is under fire and a first class anthology has lost the approval of a high school principal."

    A group of junior high-school teachers are less tolerant.  They write, "We could have sympathy and perhaps a good laugh over such an anachronism if the principal's action and the people who brought it about had not been successful in achieving their petty, malicious and undemocratic intent.  It becomes more difficult to teach the concept of majority rule when a vocal minority can so easily triumph.  Let them be heard, we say, but why should they be victorious by default."

    Meanwhile, back at my desk, I find a copy of the magazine Adam, subtitled, "The man's home companion."  It strikes a single note — provocatively posed female nudity.  In its way it's on a par with some of the lurid pocketbooks available to 11th graders at any drugstore, along with the condemned anthology of verse.  Let us remind all those concerned that, for better or worse, this is 1959.

    TELEPHONE people are laughing among themselves at a classic case of chaos which occurred in San Diego.  A customer called the company and ordered a telephone jack installed in his patio.  The order was placed in the wrong file or something with the result that on page 422 of the phone book there is a listing, "Patio, Jack."

    A LADY NAMED Kathleen noticed one of her car's tail lights was out and went into a service station for a replacement.  A mechanic found the bulb was all right but the wiring was faulty.  He fixed it and made out a bill for $2.10.  Kathy, embarrassed, discovered she didn't have that much so the bill was reduced to $1.80.  But in counting her change she found she had only $1.35.  The man wouldn't go for that, so Kathy, a little desperately, asked if he would accept one of the credit cards she carried.  Sure.  But the price went back to $2.10.

    INCITED BY the grim fact that the gal standing under the mistletoe is seldom the one a man wishes was,  Norte Joven says he's working on an electronics device which will cause a sprig of Phoradendron flavescens to blast off from a tiny launching pad concealed under his lapel and go into orbit above and around the head of the desired target.  Naturally he refers to it as his guided mistletoe.

    BIRTHDAY PARTY
The sticky little kiddies,
Are homeward bound
    again:
My darling's one year older,
And I've aged another ten.
        ROBERTA MORGAN

    AROUND TOWN — When students appeared at Audubon Junior High Saturday to rehearse for the upcoming production of "Wizard of Oz" they discovered someone had planted a  nearby real estate man's For Sale sign on the lawn in front of the auditorium . . . Believe it or not it's pure coincidence that the L.A. Press Club is taking over the Theater Mart, 600 N. Vermont Ave., where "The Drunkard" ran for many years, as its quarters . . . A  blond young lady at 3rd and Broadway was carrying a miniature poodle partially dyed pink.