By E. Graydon Carter

On the face of it, Susan Montgomery Williams of Fresno, Calif., Willie Hollingsworth of Freeport, N.Y., and the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, 64, president of the University of Notre Dame, would not appear to have a lot in common. But this year they are all set to be included in that uncommon nominator, the Guinness Book of World Records: Williams for blowing the largest bubble-gum bubble (19 1/4 in.), Hollingsworth for balancing a milk bottle on his head while walking 18 1/2 miles (a truly dying art), and Father Hesburgh for accumulating more honorary degrees than anyone else ever has. Next month Hesburgh will surpass Guinness's current record holder, former President Herbert Hoover, who had 89. Hesburgh's 90th will come from Kalamazoo College in Michigan. That looks nice on the resume, but adds up to a problem in finding space for his colorful academic hoods and coming up with acceptance speeches. "It's difficult to tailor my remarks each time," says Father Hesburgh, "but I tell the students that they have to be competent and have compassion. Not everyone can be an Albert Schweitzer or a Mother Teresa, but everyone can do something." Like balancing a milk bottle on his head, at the very least.

Many a reader engrossed in a new novel envisions actors playing the central parts. To lots of those who read William Styron's haunting, often wildly funny Sophie's Choice, there was but one actress for the title role in the film version: Meryl Streep, 33. To the delight of armchair casting directors everywhere, Streep is indeed playing Sophie, the Polish-Catholic Auschwitz survivor, resettled in postwar Brooklyn. Nathan, her neurotic, libidinous lover, is played by Kevin Kline, 34, the pirate king in the upcoming film The Pirates of Penzance. Kline is another nice bit of casting since, when she was reading the book, he was Streep's choice.

From "Not Impressed in Evanston" last week came the query: "How in heaven's name do you find the time to write the column?" Quite simple, really. As an enterprising reporter's research revealed the next day, Ann Landers, 63, has been dipping into past mailbags for old problems and answers. Ann (born Esther Pauline Friedman) receives at least 100 letters a day from her 70 million readers, but during the past 18 months she has been recycling occasional items from old columns. Landers asserts that the issues raised in the repeated items were still relevant. One such retread concerned a woman who--like a reader in 1967--was faced with that timeless quandary of whether to wash a banana after it had been peeled. "Millie in The Bronx," a fretful housewife whose letter ran in February, was rewhining the kvetch of "Irving's wife" 15 years earlier, namely, what to do with a husband who stopped off every night at his mother's for chopped herring. Says Ann in an explanatory column: "If just one editor or publisher had let me know that such a practice was not acceptable, I would have discontinued it at once. Obviously, I was naive, but I certainly was not duplicitous." Come again, Ann?

Of late, it is the rare bird that has seen hide or hair of Roger Tory Peterson, 73. America's foremost birder has been sequestered in his Connecticut studio updating A Field Guide to Western Birds. But with spring's arrival, Peterson ventured south to Texas to lead fellow Bird Experts Victor Emanuel, 41, Ted Parker, 29, and John Roulett, 38, in an effort to break the U.S. record for the most sightings in a 24-hour period. Says Peterson: "I had the best eyes and ears in Texas with me." There are some 550 species in the state. Racing from site to site by foot, van and plane, the four were really humming. From the great crested flycatcher all the way to the least grebe, they totted up tally after tally. The black-bellied whistling duck, the Swainson's warbler, the pileated woodpecker, the Caspian tern, the chachalaca and the dickcissel were all sighted, and all, says Peterson, were "old friends either by sight or sound." In the end the total was 235, beating the old mark by four species. Peterson's advice to would-be birders: "Three things--go with a friend who knows birds, carry binoculars, and take along my Field Guide to the Birds." No leathers floating around between his ears.

--By E. Graydon Carter

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