Inevitably, the charity tennis event at London's Battersea Park was heralded as a "love doubles" match, even though mixed doubles are notoriously taxing on marriages and other loving relationships. John Lloyd and his more famous wife Chris Evert Lloyd were paired against Bjorn Borg and Fiancee Mariana Simionescu, who plan to be married in July. Between hugs, pats, kisses and giggles, the foursome played reasonably serious tennis, with Chris and John winning, 6-4, 6-3. For that they were awarded $93,000, while the losers won $60,500. Charity got $35,000, leading some to wonder why it had been dubbed a charity match. Asked if he and Mariana had practiced much, the normally cool Borg arched his eyebrows and replied, "For mixed doubles, you practice away from the court." Advantage Borg.
It was his kind of event. A hall packed with politicians, Democrats for the most part, of course. Near nonstop oratory from 35 speakers. His beloved Muriel caught in the glow of spotlights and spontaneous affection. But Hubert H. Humphrey is gone: the Worcester, Mass., tribute last week was a New England scholarship fund raiser for the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the late Vice President's alma mater, the University of Minnesota. Among the battery of speakers was a particularly close friend from Senate days who had shared the ticket in Humphrey's 1968 presidential race. Embracing Muriel Humphrey, Secretary of State Edmund Muskie told the audience: "Short of the presidency itself, Hubert would have loved to have been here himself in my stead, in my role. And all of us would feel better if he were."
"Spring at Vassar is traditionally lively," began the apologetic letter from Vassar President Virginia B. Smith to National Review Editor William F. Buckley Jr. Lively was certainly one way to describe the campus hubbub Smith was describing. It had followed the choice of Buckley, husband and brother of Vassar alum nae, as the 116th commencement speaker.
The invitation supposedly was by vote of the senior class, but only 37% had actually voted. No sooner was the choice announced than 301 of 560 graduating seniors demanded Buckley's rejection, citing his un-Vassarish views on everything from nuclear power to black power, from Viet Nam to homosexuality.
Last week Buckley told Smith he would not appear and treated Vassar and the class of '80 to some vintage scorn. An American literature professor at the college, for instance, had decried Buckley's involvement in the McCarthy era thus: "It was Buckley who offered pridefully in those days the cast of mind and insinuating attitudes toward academia which intellectually veneered the crudities of Joe McCarthy, and in so doing, fueled 'McCarthyism' at its most virulent pitch with respect to the academic community." Buckley snapped that such a man should be studying English not teaching it --and that suggested a problem for Vassar.
As for the graduates:
"Having read specimens of their thought and sentiments" and aware of the fact that the majority did not desire his company, he did not want theirs. Furthermore, he had not yet written his speech so there was no love's labor lost.
The annual salary of U.S. Senators is $60,663. But some senatorial moonlighting for spare change is also allowed. Thus in financial disclosure statements filed last week, interesting sidelines showed up. Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, as deft at bluegrass fiddling as at politicking, earned $3,888 from an album (Mountain Fiddler) and $1,600 from fiddle playing on TV and radio. Republican William S. Cohen, took in less than $1,000 selling hay from his Maine farm, but an impressive $12,390 in royalties on his book of poems, Of Sons & Seasons. Vermont's Pat Leahy made a $1,500 sale of photographs he shot in China. New York Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan, on the other hand, dropped $9,000 in the commodities market after guessing wrong on pork-belly futures.
"By the ebullience and panache of your interpretive style," said the citation for the honorary doctorate of music that the New England Conservatory of Music was bestowing on Flutist James Galway, 40, "you have given the musical community a fresh voice to celebrate." Accepting the degree, Galway treated the 109th graduating class of the august Boston school to that very ebullience and panache. From under his doctoral robes, he produced two tin whistles on which he played Belfast Hornpipe and jigs drawn from an Irish boyhood.
Who wouldn't want Gloria Vanderbilt, patroness of jeans and scioness of a famous family, for a neighbor? Some of the tenants at River House, one of Manhattan's tonier cooperative apartments, that's who. Last January Vanderbilt put down her deposit on a $ 1.1 million duplex. In April the purchase was vetoed by the co-op's board of directors on the ground that she was a public figure. Vanderbilt found that argument specious, since Henry Kissinger and Broadway Producer-Director Joshua Logan already live in River House. She has gone to court, charging that the board's real--and illegal--reason is fear that she might marry black Pianist Bobby Short, a close friend who appears with her in jeans commercials. Nonsense, replies the board's lawyer. The real reason, he contends, is that Vanderbilt, despite a net worth claim of $7.6 million, actually cannot afford River House.
The Pope was celebrating his 60th birthday. So was Rome's Church of Christ the King, whose cornerstone had been blessed the same day that Karol Wojtyla was born in Wadowice, Poland, in 1920. How appropriate then for John Paul II to visit the church to celebrate Mass and enjoy a joint birthday cake. What a cake: 132 Ibs. of sponge soaked in Grand Marnier, cream filling, icing in papal yellow and white, marzipan coats of arms, and all topped by a milk chocolate model of Christ the King. Blowing out the single candle, John Paul ordered the cake distributed to orphans. He sipped boiling-hot tea and listened delightedly to an Italian choir boom out a traditional Polish birthday song, "Sto lat lat, niechaj zyje nan [100 years, 100 years, stay with us]."
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.