Though blind and deaf from the age of two, one of the late Helen Keller's favorite pastimes was writing and receiving letters, which she would "read" by having a companion either spell them manually into the palm of her hand or recite them aloud while Miss Keller touched her lips and throat and interpreted the vibrations. Recently it was announced that some 50,000 pieces of her correspondence have been bequeathed to the American Foundation for the Blind. "Are you really 70 years old?" she wrote to Mark Twain on his birthday in 1905. "Or is the report exaggerated like that of your death?" "You know, I think you and I will be better friends if we don't meet," Will Rogers once wrote to her. "They tell me you can feel one's face and tell how they look." Wrote Miss Keller to Alexander Graham Bell in 1900: "I was perfectly delighted to receive your letter in braille. It seemed almost as if you clasped my hand in yours and spoke to me in the old, dear way." And in 1922, after hearing her lecture, Carl Sandburg wrote of "the surprise to find you something of a dancer, shifting in easy postures like a good blooded race horse."

First he sailed 4,300 miles across the Pacific from Peru to French Polynesia aboard Kon-Tiki, a primitive raft made of balsa logs. Now Author-Explorer Thor Heyerdahl, 54, plans to navigate the Atlantic in a 45-ft. by 15-ft. craft made of papyrus, to prove his theory that people from ancient Mediterranean civilizations could have made the journey. Heyerdahl and a crew of six will shove off from Safi, Morocco, next month, charting a course through the Canary Islands to Central America, where traces of what seems to be primitive Old World cultures have been found. Until now Heyerdahl kept very quiet about it. "Otherwise," he says, "I would have drowned in letters from adventurers wanting to join the crew."

On a rare trip from Hickory Hill, Ethel Kennedy flew to Nassau for a few days of sun. And since she was about to celebrate her 41st birthday, her sister-in-law, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, put her husband's yacht Christina at Ethel's disposal for a Bahamian cruise. Close Friends Blanche and lim Whittaker signed on for the voyage too, and when Ethel arrived down south, a surprise present awaited her: a gold charm bracelet appropriately adorned with a jet plane, bus, typewriter, camera and microphone from the 50 newsmen who covered R.F.K.'s primary campaign.

A reporter had just asked Arkansas Governor Winthrop Rockefeller about a rumor that he would soon join arch-conservative Multimillionaire H. L. Hunt in a real estate venture. Aghast at the very idea, Rockefeller recalled an incident at the inauguration last January. As the Governor tells it, when he arrived at the box reserved for the Arkansas delegation, he discovered Hunt had appropriated one of the seats. "I told him I didn't appreciate his sitting there," said Rockefeller. When Hunt refused to move, Rockefeller grasped him by the arm and escorted him out of the box. Said Hunt: "I don't think Rockefeller likes me."

Another oil-slick hater has stepped into the ring with California's offshore-petroleum companies. Congressman John Tunney, 34, a California Democrat and the son of onetime World Heavyweight Champ Gene Tunney, donned scuba gear and took a dive in the Santa Barbara Channel to see for himself just how bad the oil leak really was. His face mask slipped off at 200 ft., but he surfaced with only a bloody nose to report that he had found more extensive damage than the oil companies have admitted. That kind of concerned derring-do scores heavily with California voters, and Democratic leaders are hinting that Tunney may square off this year with Republican George Murphy for Murphy's senatorial seat.

Marineland of the Pacific, south of Los Angeles, was awash with seals, porpoises, whales--and tired mothers lugging tired babies in their arms. There was one notable exception: a leggy blonde toting her six-month-old daughter around, papoose-style, on her back. "It's nothing really new," said Actress Jane Fonda, as Daughter Vanessa peered out of her snappy canvas carrier. "The Indians were toting their babies this way ages ago." lane figures it's pretty good for baby too. "She can look people right in the eye, instead of in the ankle or the knee"--which is the view most babies get.

Midst laurels stood: Robert Finch, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, winner of the University of Southern California's Asa V. Call award, which goes to the alumnus "who, by reason of individual accomplishment, reflects the greatest credit on the university"; Apollo 9 Astronauts David Scott, James McDivitt and Russell Schweickart, honored with the American Museum of Natural History's Gold Medal Awards, which New York Mayor John V. Lindsay presented for their "leadership in the search for knowledge." The mayor's wife, Mary Lindsay, received the Rita V. Tishman award from the Anti-Defamation League for her work in "translating democratic ideals into a way of life for all Americans in our time."

Come 1972, racing fans may well see the most valuable thoroughbred of all time. Johnny Nerud, former trainer and co-owner of Dr. Fager, announced that the 1968 Horse of the Year will mate with Dark Mirage, the feisty little filly who dashed off with distaff racing honors last year, placed second only to her new partner in the Horse-of-the-Year derby. It is a marriage made in horse-breeders' heaven; the Doc's career earnings came to $1,002, 642; Dark Mirage won nine straight races and $362,788 in 1968, making her the winningest filly in 23 years.

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