Adjunct

Re "Her Latest Creation: a Union," Jan. 27: Because the exploitation of adjunct faculty hurts students, schools, communities and part- and full-time faculty, I hope that all of these will work together to end it. But Linda Cushing and others have shown that even without help, adjunct instructors can determine their future if they manage, despite institutional obstacles, to unite. I applaud the growing number of adjunct faculty who have done so, and I urge the rest to make organizing a priority.

Walt Disney Co.'s Preston Padden, who has been one of the entertainment industry's biggest lobbyists in Washington for more than three decades, is retiring as executive vice president of worldwide government relations at the media giant. Padden, 62, will leave his post in January to later become a senior fellow and adjunct professor at the University of Colorado Law School. He will continue to advise Disney on strategic issues in the interim. Disney didn't name a replacement and said it was hiring a search firm to identify candidates.

There is an intelligent solution to the teaching assistants' complaints at the University of California: adjunct faculty. We hold PhDs, we are not apprentices, we are experienced and flexible. We are many; many the products of the UC system, especially the humanities and social sciences. And we earn about $18,000 a year, about what UC spends on TAs. THURBER D. PROFFITT PhD Adjunct, History Department Cerritos College

Kenneth C. Bass III, the Justice Department official who helped write the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the federal government with the approval of a special court to spy on foreigners suspected of espionage in the United States, died of cancer April 27 at his home in Great Falls, Va. He was 65.

Leslie Steven Rothenberg, director of UCLA Medical Center's Program in Medical Ethics and an adjunct assistant professor at the UCLA School of Medicine, has been elected a Fellow of the Hastings Center, a research center for the study of ethical issues in medicine and biology. Rothenberg, a 1968 graduate of the UCLA School of Law, recently completed a six-year term as co-chairman of the Los Angeles County Medical and Bar Assns.' Joint Committee on Biomedical Ethics.

"Stealth Lobby Drives Fuel Additive War" (June 16) mischaracterizes my commitment to protecting the health of the unsuspecting public from the dangers of methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE). A jury found that Mobil Oil Corp. wrongfully dismissed me in a groundbreaking whistle-blowing case when I disclosed that Mobil was marketing gasoline that contained illegally and dangerously high quantities of benzene in Japan. The appellate court upheld the jury decision against Mobil, which awarded me large compensatory and punitive damages.

Parents and PTA members who feel that children may be suffering in the cross-fire between labor and management are right. I am certain that the loss of a holiday music program presents a minor hardship for some students, but real, enduring hardships are placed on teachers everyday: Teachers don't have enough materials for a class set, there is a constant threat of gang violence, and budget cuts have increased the student-teacher ratio, making it...

"I sound silly," said Ray Bolger, demonstrating an infectious giggle, one of the several laughs he uses to promote hilarity at Saint John's Hospital and Health Center. "But that's all right. I bet I made you smile." Bolger, perhaps best known for his film role as Scarecrow in "The Wizard of Oz," is featured along with the Marx Brothers, Peter Sellers and other comedy greats on a "laughter channel" aired daily on television throughout the Santa Monica hospital.

"I sound silly," said Ray Bolger, demonstrating an infectious giggle, one of the several laughs he uses to promote hilarity at Saint John's Hospital and Health Center. "But that's all right. I bet I made you smile." Bolger, perhaps best known for his film role as Scarecrow in "The Wizard of Oz," is featured along with the Marx Brothers, Peter Sellers and other comedy greats on a "laughter channel" aired daily on television throughout the Santa Monica hospital.

The Product: Experts have been saying for years that there's no such thing as a magic pill for weight loss. But who knows? They used to think no pill could treat bacterial pneumonia or erectile dysfunction. At a time when scientists are unlocking new secrets about our appetites and metabolism, it seems at least remotely plausible that the secret to a slimmer body could someday fit into a capsule. Maybe it's already there.

The Whitney Museum of American Art has unveiled a design by architect Renzo Piano for a satellite museum in lower Manhattan. The museum's bold, asymmetrical design will provide 50,000 square feet of gallery space over six floors, compared with 32,000 square feet at its uptown New York location. It will allow the Whitney to show more of its 20th- and 21st-century collection and offer more temporary exhibitions. Construction is slated to begin in spring 2009 and be completed in late 2012.

The merchants at the Sonora Market are doing a brisk business in plastic pumpkins, wizard costumes and devil's pitchforks. Eerie music blares from the loudspeakers: It's the Halloween rush. "I want my Halloween!" Mexican children will shout this week, though not necessarily the same night as kids north of the border. "Quiero mi Halloween," they will say, because there is no commonly used translation of "Trick or treat!"

Time off? What's that? Melinda Marie Jette, an adjunct professor at Western Oregon University, is teaching four courses this semester, and on the three days a week she has no classes, she grades papers, does research and applies for tenure-track jobs. Jette, who teaches early American history, is a member of a growing army of part-time professors at the nation's universities.

For more than 50 years, the communists and former communists of Hollywood have written the script of the past, telling the story of the blacklist in memoirs and histories, movies and documentaries in which they depict themselves as noble martyrs and champions of democracy. It is time, finally, to put an end to the glorification of this unhappy period and take a cleareyed look at the Hollywood Ten, the blacklist and the movie industry Reds who wielded such influence in the 1930s and 1940s.

Re "Her Latest Creation: a Union," Jan. 27: Because the exploitation of adjunct faculty hurts students, schools, communities and part- and full-time faculty, I hope that all of these will work together to end it. But Linda Cushing and others have shown that even without help, adjunct instructors can determine their future if they manage, despite institutional obstacles, to unite. I applaud the growing number of adjunct faculty who have done so, and I urge the rest to make organizing a priority.

Near the Lycee Charles de Gaulle, Loic and his pals fire up Gauloise cigarettes, sip thimbles of jet-black coffee and argue about the day's headlines in Le Monde, happy in their preferred suburb of Paris: London. A morning's train ride away, across the Channel, English kids knock back pints of bitters and debate the merits of Liverpool's soccer team at the Frog & Princess Pub in Saint-Germain-des-Pres.

ONE thing that doesn't shrink when people get older are feet: They enlarge. More specifically, they flatten. The feet's tendons and ligaments lose some of their elasticity and don't hold the bones and joints together as tidily. When combined with other aging-related changes, the feet can encounter limits to how much use - or abuse - they can take. Dr. Steven Pribut, a podiatrist at George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, D.C., estimates that some people over the age of 40 can gain half a shoe size every 10 years.

Americans worried about running out of money in their golden years are trying a new investment strategy: day trading their retirement funds. Disillusioned with the conventional buy-and-hold approach, baby boomers are anxious to improve their retirement prospects after two punishing bear markets in the last decade. Some people are trading the mutual funds in their 401(k) plans more frequently. Others are venturing into options. And some aggressive investors have begun day trading their nest eggs - all in a bid to make up for lost time.

In Europe, casual brasseries are often joined at the hip to more formal dining establishments. Sometimes regular diners need to dine quickly or cheaply, and being able to do so at a favorite restaurant is a prized privilege. That's exactly what maitre d' Bill Magnuson (Gustaf) and chef Ulf Strandberg (Anders) had in mind when they opened Back Pocket, a smaller, less expensive adjunct to their well-known Gustaf Anders in Santa Ana.

There is an intelligent solution to the teaching assistants' complaints at the University of California: adjunct faculty. We hold PhDs, we are not apprentices, we are experienced and flexible. We are many; many the products of the UC system, especially the humanities and social sciences. And we earn about $18,000 a year, about what UC spends on TAs. THURBER D. PROFFITT PhD Adjunct, History Department Cerritos College