Lady Rilke and Mrs. Miro * The Steward's Daughter * Johann, George Frederick, and Les The Managerial Metamorphosis * The New York Window

I HAVE A DEEP DISTASTE FOR musical instruments that have to be plugged in. Fifty years ago the only respectable musician who used an electric cord was the guitarist Les Paul. He was actually quite good but I now regard him as the beginning of a horrid trend that really exploded into dominance in the 1960s, with musical stages becoming a maze of wires and speakers. The latest outrage is that pipe organs in churches are being replaced by electric devices. Bach and Handel by synthesized sound! The last outpost of sanity seems to be the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music. It has rules prohibiting electric instruments.

IN JULY, CONNIE MARIANO, the Filipino-American White House physician was made an admiral. Her father had been a Navy steward, and therein lies a tale I am proud to tell. Thirty years ago, Timothy Ingram wrote an article for this magazine entitled, "The Navy's Floating Plantation." It described how Filipinos in the U.S. Navy were employed almost exclusively as servants to high-ranking officers and in the executive dining rooms of the brass. The result was the kind of impact we always want for an article but rarely occurs. Admiral Elm. R. Zumwalt, then the Navy's top officer, immediately issued an order opening up many more jobs for Filipinos. The end result of that order was the opportunity given to Connie Mariano. She recalls that her father had worked for six admirals. As a young girl, she sometimes accompanied him when he went to the admirals' houses: "Never by the front door. We always went through the garage, the backdoor, or the kitchen."

THE KOREAN WAR LASTED three years. Our next war on the Asian continent, Vietnam, was three times as long. Why the difference? One reason, I suspect is that in Korea, the sons and daughters of the influential were being killed, while in Vietnam the powerless did most of the dying. James Brady, a writer who fought in Korea, recently described his comrades: "Young men like Wild Horse Callan, off his daddy's New Mexico ranch; Doug Bradlee, the big, red-haired Harvard tackle who wanted to teach; handsome Dick Brennan, who worked in a Madison Avenue ad agency; Mack Allen, the engineer from the Virginia Military Institute; Bob Bjornsen, the giant forest ranger; and Carly Rand of the Rand McNally clan." Brady goes on to describe another of his comrades in Korea, John Chafee, the future governor of Rhode Island and U.S. Senator who died last year: "A college wrestling star, he dropped out of Yale at 19 to join the Marines after Pearl Harbor, fighting on Guadal-canal as a private, then made officers candidate school and fought on Okinawa." Any man who took part in either of these brutal battles would have a right to feel he had done his part. But after graduating from Yale and Harvard Law School, "he went back to commanding riflemen in combat [in Korea]. A man with money and connections (his great-grandfather and great uncle both had served as governor), he never took the easy out."

JOHN CHAFEE IS one of my heroes. Another, Paul Taylor, has an article in this issue. Paul, you may recall, is the former Washington Post political reporter who gave up a career that had him well on his way to journalistic stardom, to devote himself to the cause of campaign finance reform; trying among other things to deal with the failure of broadcasters to do their part. Recently a bipartisan national commission that Taylor had helped form recommended that each station give five minutes a night for 30 nights before the election to letting the candidates speak. They could be local, state, or national candidates, just so both sides were given a fair opportunity. Only two percent of the stations have agreed to make even this modest sacrifice even though their very existence is due to licenses given them by the public.

AS YOU MAY KNOW SAN Fransisco's Candlestick Park has been renamed 3Com Park. This is part of a general trend that has one sports team after another selling the naming rights to its stadium to a corporation. This violates a lovely tradition of evocatively named ballparks from the Polo Grounds to Fenway Park to the recently christened Camden Yards. The one time-honored exception to this rule permits the use of the name of the owner as with Wrigley Field in Chicago and the old Crosley Field in Cincinnati. I believe that this was also the case with Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. But I don't know. If anyone out there does know, please write.

REMEMBER OUR ITEM ABOUT HOW insurance corporations overcharged blacks? I am delighted to report that one of them, a very big one in fact, has agreed to make restitution. American General has agreed to pay $206 million to settle a class action suit brought on behalf of their black policy holders.

THE GREAT TRADITION OF women's magazines being on the take continues to this day. In the past they were notable for praising the products of frequent advertisers and the resorts, airlines, and cruise ships that gave their writers free trips. Now they're touting the plastic surgeons that give their writers free face lifts and tummy tucks. "There's little question," writes Anne Jarrell of The New York Times, "that accepting free treatment is widespread at women's magazines, where most articles about the booming fields of cosmetic surgery and dermatology appear." Does favorable coverage result? Just ask Dr. Patricia Wexler, a Manhattan dermatologist: "All the time I give free botox, collagen, chemical peels to journalists who will write about it. They quote me as if I were George Washington."

One writer dared to criticize a procedure performed for her by Dr. David Bank. "That's the only time that has happened to me," was the physician's indignant response.

WHEN I ENTERED COLUMBIA AS A student years ago, I quickly realized that if you wanted to impress your peers with your sophistication you had to drop the right names. The problem is that often I learned little more than the name. This had its hazards. One girl I was trying to impress saw through me when I referred to the poet Rilke and the painter Miro as "she."

The insecurities of growing up may excuse this kind of folly in the young. But we all know mature adults who continue to drop names to make it appear they're in the know. What is their excuse? I'm interested in pursuing this matter. What are the names people need to drop today? Similarly, what are the ideas and causes--artistic and political--that they feel they must be able to make a hip shorthand reference to? And what does this need say about them? Perhaps those of you whose hearts did not beat faster at my call for help on Ebbets Field will be inspired to come to my aid on this matter.

DURING THE REPUBLICAN convention, one delegate, arguing for tax reduction asked an interviewer: "Do you want to work for yourself or work for the government?" This is the way many Republicans think. To them, taxes are what some abstract entity called government takes from them. They don't stop to think that these taxes pay for the social security and veterans pensions their parents get. They pay for a Federal Drug Administration to guard against unsafe drugs, etc.... It's weird. When you remind them of those facts they seem to grudgingly agree. But you can be sure that the next Republican you meet will say "I want to work for myself, not for the government."

USUALLY CONSERVATIVES disparage government programs. Why then do they have this absolute conviction that the government can succeed in building a system that seeks and destroys incoming inter-continental ballistic missiles? If Dick Cheney doesn't trust the government to run Head Start, how can he trust it to shoot a bullet out of the sky?

MORE ABOUT JOHN GIELGUD. He was such a great actor that it seemed that there wasn't a part he could not play. This, alas, proved to be untrue when he cast himself in a New York production of Euripides' Medea starring Judith Anderson and directed by Gielgud. When the actor playing the swashbuckling Jason became ill, Gielgud stepped into his shoes. But Gielgud was slightly effeminate and the resulting performance was embarrassing. This experience taught me a lesson. One is always tempted to think a great artist can do anything. But we all have limits. This is true of the writers with whom I have worked. Many of them are so gifted that you are tempted to ask them to exceed their limit. But you can't ask the unfunny to be funny. And you can't expect good writers to automatically be good editors. And friends in education tell me that a similar truth applies when it is assumed that good teachers will make good administrators. Often this does not prove to be the case.