Enjoy it while you can, guys. Joyce Brothers, spreading joy for millions of younger sisters, predicts a decade of the ”she” generation. With 105 eligible men competing for the affections of every 100 eligible women in the 1990s (compared with 7.3 ”excess” women in the `80s), psychologist Brothers said: ”Women will be writing the script. They will demand courting. They will demand romance. They will demand babies within marriage. They will demand marriage.”
KORCHNOI RESIGNS FIRST Korchnoi`s complaint: True to his testy word, Viktor Korchnoi has quit an international tournament of chess grand masters in Linares, Spain, because old nemesis Viktor Barturinsky remained a main referee. Barturinsky is pals with another old nemesis from the Soviet Union, Anatoly Karpov, and was involved in numerous disputes when Karpov beat Korchnoi in 1978 and 1981. Korchnoi, who quit the Soviet Union in 1976 and now plays for Switzerland, missed witnessing sweet revenge in Linares-a first-round defeat of Karpov by Briton Nigel Short. CALIFORNIANS GET SKUNKED From the land of eucalyptus and love beads comes a whiff of unwelcome guests. Many whiffs, actually. Skunks are moving into affluent Marin County near San Francisco, and apparently they don`t give two scents about human sensitivities. ”People . . . are seeing them all over the place, not just in the rural areas,” said Wendy O`Neil of the Marin Wildlife Center. ”It`s really widespread.” The center and the Marin Humane Society are getting upwards of 50 complaints daily, including tales of uninvited stinky tenants in basements. Point Reyes Station bookstore owner Esther Silver knows only too well. In three weeks, Silver has trapped six skunks under her shop and adjacent rental unit. Scented candles inside provide testimony of other elusive critters. ”It`s a constant struggle,” Silver said. ”You can`t even drive over the hill to San Rafael without going through three areas of skunk smells. Everybody`s complaining.”
OH, HOW I TRIED It must have been a sense of inadequacy that enveloped William Ryan, mostly of the third class sort. Ryan, 59, a rural postal carrier for 15 years in Milton, Fla., got in trouble after postal inspectors found 500,000 undelivered pieces of mail in his home. ”Things just seemed to snowball,”
the contrite letter carrier told U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson, explaining that the junk-mail workload of his rural route near Pensacola was too much to handle. Three years ago he began bringing home undelivered mail. Because a few tax bills and voter-registration cards were among them, a first-class charge of ”failure to deliver” was initiated. Ryan pleaded guilty. ”I`m very sorry for what happened,” he told Vinson, adding. ”It`s been a bad year.” A $3,000 fine and 6 months in jail won`t make 1989 any better, although Ryan probably can use the time to sort things out.
MEHTA`S SECOND HAND Time to adjourn: Conductor Zubin Mehta, asked why he waves his baton so quickly: ”It makes the music livelier, pleases the audience . . . and gets me home earlier!”
