As Yale's President A. Whitney Griswold struggled to patch up relations between his students and New Haven cops--askew after last month's snowball-and-night-stick war (TIME, March 30)--an old grad unkindly recalled some carefree words addressed to a student mob in 1951, less than a year after Griswold had taken office. Said the president, in the green days of administrative youth: "I love a riot . . . I loved them when I was an undergraduate . . . I can yield to no one the record of smashed light bulbs . . ."

Hale as could be on his 85th birthday, salty, shaggy Poet Robert Frost huffed lamely at a birthday cake, tackled the inevitable press conference. "Someone said to me that New England's in decay," rasped Frost. "But I said the next President is going to be from Boston. That doesn't sound like decay." Who, he was asked, might that be? "Can't you figure that out? It's a Puritan named (John) Kennedy." Aha, but did Frost want the boyish Senator to win? "Anything from Boston is all right with me."

With the will of the late Vincent Astor (TIME, Feb. 16) waiting for probate, the temporary administrators of the estate petitioned Dutchess County, N.Y. surrogate's court for help on a little problem in part created by Philanthropist Astor's uncanny financial touch. The request: permission to invest earnings of the mammoth estate (at least $100 million), which is burgeoning at the rate of more than $200,000 a month.

Europe-bound aboard the Queen Mary, Negro Cinemactress Dorothy Dandridge, who has finished her chores as Bess in Sam Goldwyn's forthcoming movie version of Porgy and Bess, hoisted the conventional pretty wave for the flashbulbs on the day of a proud revelation: her engagement to Jack Denison, white proprietor of a Hollywood supper club.

In a Boston University dormitory, Freshman John Thomas, 18, gangly (6 ft. 4 3/4 in.), growing Negro who in February jumped higher (7 ft. 1 1/4 in.) than any other man in recorded athletic history, slammed shut the latticework gate on an upward-bound elevator. When it rose, Thomas' size 12 left foot was jammed between the car and the shaft walls. Result: severe lacerations and bruises. After surgery, doctors predicted that High Jumper Thomas would be off the sawdust for six to twelve weeks.

On a jaunt with Grandmother through an exotic bazaar in Beersheba, Israel, pert, 16-year-old Nina Roosevelt* spied the cutest souvenir ever, begged Grandma to bargain for it with the canny Bedouins. Obligingly, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt shelled out $77 for a scrawny baby camel (named "Duchess" by Nina), which, if Daddy approves, will stalk the Roosevelts' Hyde Park estate until it gets big enough to deserve permanent residence in any interested zoo.

For his backstage visitor, Actor Ralph Bellamy, starring on Broadway as the young F.D.R. in Dore Schary's Sunrise at Campobello, perked his jaw at a bold tangent, managed a practiced facsimile of the famed face-wide grin. On hand to size up the miming: South Carolina's retired Democratic Governor James F. Byrnes, 79, whose memory of spats with the boss he once served seemed mellowed: "I understood Mr. Roosevelt's feelings about politics. But it is inevitable when you have a political difference with someone that people attribute bitterness to it. Bitterness is a popular word in politics."

Taking command (in August) of Army forces in Alaska: lean, grey-haired Major General John H. Michaelis, 46, onetime (1947-48) aide-de-camp to Chief of Staff Dwight Eisenhower, combat-proved commander (1950-51) of the famed 27th Infantry ("Wolfhound") Regiment, which held off North Korean armies in the Pusan perimeter while U.S. forces massed for a crushing breakthrough.

In the Virgin islands, feline Songstress Eartha Kitt pawed doubtfully at the mystery of her throaty allure: "I don't have a voice. I sing the way I do because my vocal cords don't join each other properly." Eartha's ambition: "When I'm 110 years old I want people to remember Eartha Kitt. I'm after longevity."

Her Majesty's government, diplomatically resigned to the high cost of quenching Washingtonian thirst, hoisted the 1960 entertainment allowance of Ambassador to the U.S. Sir Harold Caccia by $9,548 to a liquid $94,864. Allowance of Millionaire John Hay ("Jock") Whitney, U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's: a mere $30,000 or so.

Ensuring that his records will be broadcast in at least two U.S. cities, come what may, collegiate Crooner Pat Boone (B.S., Columbia '58) joined a financial combo to buy radio stations WKDA in Nashville and KNOK in Fort Worth. Price: about $1,000,000.

* Daughter of Republican Businessman John Roosevelt.

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