Congratulations on a fine transition to a monthly format, losing none of your spark. It was disappointing, though, to see Silja Talvi take up more than 15 percent of the space with "Cult of Character" (January 2006) yet hardly mention any of the precursors and competitors to Bill Gothard and his Character Training Institute-some of them more colorful, memorable and successful than he. I well remember similar "characters" invited into public schools I attended 50 years ago, preaching similar gospels, typically laced with a strong dose of calomel for the "Communist menace." Social histories of the United States recount practitioners of such arts for at least 300 years. Who could forget Cotton Mather, Father Coughlin or our narrower gauge Boston figure, Father Feeney? Talvi would have done better to show Bill Gothard as a recent traveler on a well-worn path.

Just after I read Craig Aaron's review of Rednecks & Bluenecks ("Country's Jingoistic Jingles," January 2006), I heard Darryl Worley's pro-war "Have You Forgotten" on my radio. It is still played occasionally on three country-western stations in my area, as is Toby Keith's song and Alan Jackson's "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)." As one who has been listening to country-western music for 70 years and who has been a polemicist for peace for nearly 50 of those years, I have been more than a little upset by the jingoistic trend in country-western music.