was a nice collection of interviews. The interviewees seem to have been chosen for type and they each had a Bermudian situation and approach to relate. What strikes me as remarkable is that even though all of them clearly had trouble with marriage they all seem to support the institution. They all anticipate that marriage will be the form of any real functional attachment they make in their life. I would think that their experience would show them that, as often as not, marriage is unfunctional and unreal. Current statistics for the developed world are running marriage at a lousy 50 percent success rate. What other important life investment would you make with those stakes? Would you buy a car if there was 50 percent chance there was a crack in the foundation? How many children would you have if there was a 50 percent chance they would die in their first seven years? Marriage has not changed in its structure since the middle ages. Every child knows the programme. You get married to a person of the other sex; you stay married till you die. You may have children and their raising and support is an integral part of the marriage. In the middle ages, when life was brutal, tedious and short, the odds of marriage were just as bad. But those odds were good compared to the rest of life's miseries. Sterile women were reviled partly out of jealousy. They had a much better chance of living to middle age than their fertile sisters. The average marriage lasted 12 years because one of the partners, usually the woman, died.

And in a sense marriage was as binding as it is today. People cheated then.

There are moments in European history that would appal a modern decadent. They just didn't talk about it. And I'll bet it hurt just as badly. We don't live that way any more. We have birth control and that really changes everything.

Marriage is the one aspect of our intersexual life that is considered inviolable. Every other part of our social-sexual interaction contradicts it, from sex education, to flirting, popular media and dating. The marriage contract is still "unto death''. When we don't like it we rely on the institution of divorce. If marriage is a sort of archaic whimsy, divorce is usually an awful, badly planned, destructive mess. Ironically it is also a social practice that is now considered a standard procedure. But it was never conceived or designed to have a useful, accepted function. Divorce is the modern add-on to the mediaeval tradition that is supposed to make marriage palatable to us. But it actually makes a mockery of marriage. Incidently, recent studies have shown that children, far from enduring well in divorce, are fundamentally traumatised. This is more pronounced in teenagers than younger children, because they are developing their sexual values. So, why do we go on supporting this appalling practice of marriage? First, out of the 50 percent of marriages that do work, a percentage of those are happy marriages.

A happy marriage is one of the sweet things anyone in this life will have the luck to witness. It is beneficially bonding, produces happy children, strengthens the community and ameliorates the harmful effects the rest of the community may have on those children. It tends to make its participants finer and happier people. No one wants to kill a good thing, but of course happy marriages happen a lot less than we all would like. Second, there just is no other option. Some people in the 1960s tried to invent new relationships and some succeeded but most failed. It's too bad we are not still trying to invent alternatives. Religion has not, so far, seen this as its creative domain and that's too bad. We need a new marriage/family contract and it should probably be based on faith. Other than divorce, the only possible action, in the case of a marriage gone wrong, is infidelity. It is a logical conclusion but it is not real. One is still married but by breach of contract, in a sense one is not married. So what is one? The 20th century has tested marriage and found it wanting. This difficult and unfunctional institution will be more harshly tested in the next century. Instead of moaning about our supposed decadence we should find a rule that is of benefit to us. I have not found one yet, but I'm looking. JOHN ZUILL Pembroke Make visitors feel good June 24, 1999 Dear Sir, On Tuesday of this week, I received a phone call from a fellow band member to say that my name was in the `paper'. I did not know what to expect; suffice to say I was at least curious. I was pleasantly surprised to read in the `Visitor's View' that some visitors I'd met loved every moment of their visit thanks to myself and others.

As is usually the case, we are requested to play special tunes (if we know them) and the night before they left was no exception. `Back to back....' is not one of our regular songs, (it's not requested much) so it was rendered instrumentally; or that at least was the plan. As for myself, I play the electric (Fender) bass and I don't sing! Even if I could, if the words were lost to me, I wouldn't!!; but not all singers think like that. Sad.

All in all, we did have fun and the intermissions ended all too soon: we wish all our visitors well. Personally, I think that the day our national friendliness is no more will be a sad day indeed. We must preserve it at all costs and of course I will continue to do my part and not sing.

C.K. SIMONS JR.

Sandys Parish Pension her off June 12, 1999 Dear Sir, I cannot understand all this discussion regarding the (exalted) salary for Mrs. Lois Browne Evans.

The woman is severely over age anyway.

Pension her off.

LILIAN FOUNTAIN Pembroke