Letters

The views expressed here are those of the writers. ONE's readers cover a wide range of geographical, economic, age, and educational status. This department aims to express this diversity.

Dear Don Slater:

If we stop taking ourselves so damned seriously and learn to laugh at ourselves, perhaps other segments of society would join in the laughter, and the laugh would be with us, not directed at us.

If humor would not work, perhaps you should try to be clever. I know ONE is supposed to be artistic and perhaps it is, though I'd not call it that. It's more esoteric to me than anything, and if I have any gripe at all, it is the Greenwich Village format you use. I might grant you've all tried to be original, but perhaps you've been stalemated. For instance, your "Letters" column, look at it Slater! Why not try the head, To One and All, (something to tie the publication in with reader identification). Even if you don't use the head, I hope this will at least catapult some ideas on the subject. I know you can't come up with these things by osmosis, that's why the suggestions.

Love I have for ONE, but sometimes it reads like an anaemic and prissy dissertation on the love life of the butterfly in Outer Mongolia. Keep trying!

Dear Sir:

Mr. R. GARRISON, N. Y.

I read with interest the comments in a recent issue regarding the faithful who have contacted ONE regarding unemployment. Would suggest they go into practical nursing. During the depression in the '30s I decided to start work as a practical nurse. I went to a second-hand bookstore and bought a book on nursing, then registered as a practical nurse at different registries. Another suggestion would be to take an orderly job in an institution temporarily and then gradually take on something better. In the olden times graduate nurses had to scrub floors first.

Mr. W.

MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.

Dear Sir:

I can be catalogued as "The Single Homosexual" by choice, entirely absorbed in what I am doing and also by nature. Yet I do have an intense longing to find someone who, if the right person, would share my home with me. I am beautifully situated in beautiful Daytona Beach. I have considerable leisure, yet am extremely absorbed in my work. I have an ever-intense longing to find the right one who would share what I have and contribute to my happiness, as I should to his. Mr. A.

Gentlemen:

DAYTONA BEACH, FLA.

I am not of the Gay World, but "straight." I have one child, a 22 year old boy, who has been Gay since he was 14 years old. I have known about this since last April. Since then I have made his life my life.

My husband and I have a large three-story house and are filling our house with Gay boys. So far we have six who are rooming and boarding with us. The people I have known so far of the Gay World are wonderful, talented, fascinating people. I love them all. Since they have come to our home they are much more settled down, much happier and more secure. In our home they know they can be themselves and are protected. What a pity there cannot be more "straight" people who understand and accept Gay people. My son says I know more about Gay Life and homosexuality than a lot of Gay people do.

I am tyring to write a book, in order to bring better relationships between parents and children of the Gay World. We have had parties in our home accommodating 25 to 30 at a time that were talked about for months afterward. They were nice, decent parties, where they can have drinks and be themselves.

Mrs. R.

KANSAS CITY, MO.