From the Grass Roots

THE Art Director of the Grapevine is evidently one with a sublime sense of the fitness of things and a rare gift of occult symbolism. The choice of somber, jet, funereal black as the key color for the January issue was a master stroke of genius! This issue especially has topped the steady trend towards giving a reader the impression he has stumbled across the "Churchman's Review," the "Embalmer's Echo," or to some degree the "Ameriman Mercury." My sensitive soul even detects a delicate significance, gentle as the flapping of angel's wings, in the motif employed in the yellow used to relieve the black . . .on the front cover only. (The back, fittingly, is kept a solid mournful black.) The design suggests rehabilitated alcoholics released from bondage, wending their way heavenward from this workaday earthbound world.