"We're almost in the business of flying rainbows over crushed emeralds," said Richard Bach, author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Bach had been flying a 1929 Travel Air 4000 over Pecatonica, Ill. for a documentary being made from his book Nothing by Chance (1969) about barnstorming in the '20s and '30s. The film version of Jonathan takes off next fall.

In spite of his wife's occasional remonstrances, Veteran Actor Sir Ralph Richardson, 70, rides a motorcycle daily when he can. "I had my first motorcycle at 16 and am unable to say when I'll have my last," he explained in Sydney. Australia, where he will be starring in William Douglas-Home's play, Lloyd George Knew My Father. Invited to have a look at a new German BMW, Sir Ralph suddenly took off for a spin. "Sorry, dear," he said later to his wife. "The infernal machine got the better of me."

The conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra was napping at home one afternoon not long ago when the telephone rang. Waking him, his wife said, "The President's on the line." "The president of what?" asked Eugene Ormandy. Richard Nixon was calling to forward an invitation from the Chinese government to the orchestra of its choice--the Philadelphia. Following the lead of the Vienna and London orchestras, which have also toured China, the Philadelphia is not including any works by Russian composers. Ormandy announced last week that it is, however, preparing to play the Yellow River Concerto, a modern Chinese work. The composer is not one man but several, namely "the committee of the composers' union."

"Charging down is Prince Charles, son of . . . Let me think a minute . . . Oh yes, the Queen and that fellow . . . I remember--Prince Philip." The commentator at the polo match was former American Polo Player Tom Oxley cutting up during the Prince's visit to the Bahamas for their Independence Day celebrations (TIME, July 16). The jokes about the royal family were labored. But when Oxley described polo as a disease like polio, the usually easy-going Prince, 24, had had enough. At half time he grimly ran up the steps of the commentator's box: "Cut out the wisecracks," Charles ordered. "You are turning this into a barn dance."

Geraldine Chaplin was sitting on top of the world. Charlie's oldest daughter, 28, was in Madrid with her lover, Director Carlos Saura. She was also playing Anne of Austria in a zany new version of The Three Musketeers directed by Richard Lester (A Hard Day's Night). Meanwhile four other versions of the Dumas novel were being filmed, two in Italy and two in France, making this the summer of the 15 Musketeers.

"What's your wife's name?" Duke Ellington asked the man who was standing next to the piano. Jacques Kosciusko-Morizet, the French ambassador to the U.S., answered, "Yanie." "Well, then," said the 74-year-old musician, "this tune will be called Yanie." He played a few bars for the crowd that had gathered in Manhattan's French consulate to see Ellington presented with the French Legion of Honor--the first to go to a jazz musician. The ambassador answered back on the piano with a few bars of Ellington's Mood Indigo.

"The countries that I like best don't have diplomatic relations with the U.S.," said Eldridge Cleaver four years ago, after leaving Cuba for Algeria. Still on the lam for breaking parole, the ex-information minister for the Black Panthers has decided that he would like to live in France, and has twice requested political asylum there. Minister of the Interior Raymond Marcellin has twice turned him down on the ground that Cleaver did not require asylum, "which implies that life or liberty is menaced."

"This is a nonpolitical trip, as you can tell, just like Alabama was," Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy, 41, told the reception committee at the Salt Lake City International Airport. Kennedy was joining California's Democratic Senator John Tunney, 39, and Representatives William J. Green, 35, of Pennsylvania, and Wayne Owens, 36, of Utah, for a rafting expedition down the Colorado River. Each had invited a son: Ted Kennedy Jr., 11; Teddy Tunney, 12; Billy Green, 8; and Doug Owens, 10. The octet successfully jumped twelve major rapids on their six-hour trip between Westwater and Cisco in eastern Utah. Teddy Jr. told reporters that he hoped to go into politics, a remark treated with good-natured skepticism by his father, who asked: "If he can't find his way through here, what would he do when he gets to Washington?"

Not all the Americans traveling in Europe were complaining about the shriveling dollar. "I've been living as cavalierly as usual," admitted Director Peter Bogdanovich, who was camping out at the Grand Hotel in Rome while scouting locations for a movie of the Henry James novel Daisy Miller. He and his girl friend Cybill Shepherd (who will play Daisy) did notice that a single scoop of the famous ice cream in the Piazza Navona had doubled in price within a year, to 200 lire (35-c-).

Jackie Onassis was not feeling the pinch either. She arrived on Capri wearing last year's sandals and at once toured half a dozen shoe stores. After she had picked out ten pairs of shoes and sandals, a secretary came by to pay the bill.

It would be "the Libber v. the Lobber," said Tennis Hustler Bobby Riggs, 55, announcing that he would play Wimbledon Champion Billie Jean King, 29, after Labor Day. Riggs, who roundly defeated Margaret Court last May, said he had taken 400 vitamin pills before that match. Last week Ms. King suggested that he had "better start taking twice as many vitamins. I'm not Margaret Court," said Ms. King. "She couldn't handle the pressure." There will be even more pressure on Billie Jean since she and Bobby will be playing for the largest purse ever put up for a tennis match--$100,000--with an extra $100,000 going to the winner from TV, radio and film rights.

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