They don`t call him ”Pellet Gun” Krause for nothing. Rick Krause, a teacher from Sparta, Mich., has won Michigan`s 16th annual cherry pit-spitting contest in Eau Claire-by puckering up and launching a pit 59 feet, 6 inches into a stiff breeze. ”If the wind had been the other way, I think it would have been a record,” said Krause, a repeat winner who once blew away competitors with a cherry pit spit of 72 feet. Hey, that`s farther than a Calvin Schiraldi spitball.
WHAT`S BEHIND THE HURT? Whatever goes around. . . . Actor William Hurt`s younger brother suspects that his famous sibling is getting paybacks in that clawing palimony suit from Sandra Jennings. ”In the long run, yes, he took care of them financially,” said Jim Hurt in People magazine. ”But he always kept Sandra guessing as to when the payment would come in. This attitude of keeping her twisting in the wind . . . is what did most of the damage. Sandra was never a gold-digger.” Still, said Jim Hurt, the falling-out might have been avoided: ”If Sandra`s relationship with Bill had been healthier, if he`d shown her more courtesy over the years, then there wouldn`t be such bitterness now. He treats her almost like she`s the baby-sitter.”
A SORRY BOMBER`S HINDSIGHT At the University of Wisconsin, it was reunion time for Vietnam protesters. Among those returning to Madison was David Fine, the onetime teenage fugitive who served 2 1/2 years in federal prison for bombing an Army research center on campus in 1970. Now a legal assistant in Portland, Ore., Fine, 37, regrets the bombing, which killed one student and injured several others. ”Regardless of why the bombing happened . . . that in no way justifies the death and destruction,” Fine said. ”So I have a lot of regrets about that. Always have, always will, I`m sure.” As for the other three conspirators, only Leo Burt remains a fugitive.
SAVE THE FLAG-FROM BUSH Garrison Keillor apparently supports a proposed constitutional amendment to keep the flag sacred-but only if it`s amended: ”Any decent law to protect the flag ought to prohibit politicians from wrapping it around themselves,”
wrote Keillor in the New York Times.
GEE, STAY AWHILE In Palatka, Fla., Police Chief Dan Thies was chatting at the station with a visitor about law-enforcement opportunities when news of an armed robbery was telephoned from a nearby convenience store. Pausing for a fill-in, Thies realized that crooks really are as dumb as they sometimes seem. Pink and gray shorts, you say? ”The lieutenant on the phone says, `Does that look familiar to you?` and I`m sitting here looking at the guy,” said Thies. Soon visitor David Marshall, 25, was paraded into a police lineup-and then into the lockup. Shaking his head afterward, Thies said: ”I didn`t give him an application.” `MAZELTOV`-BUT REMEMBER. It was an occasion of joy for Robert Blum and Joanna Kan. Sort of.
The New York Jew and Polish-born former Catholic were married Sunday in Warsaw`s first synagogue wedding since World War II.
Amid laughter and good wishes in Nozyk Synagogue was the memory of 3 million Polish Jews murdered by Nazis.
”There`s no heart left. There`s only one synagogue, a broken-down community, mostly of old people,” said Blum, 29, a corporation lawyer. ”All of my Jewish education did not prepare me. . . . We thought, this is the last generation of Jews in Poland.”
The couple, who met in New York after Kan, 22, emigrated there in 1983, decided that marrying in Nozyk might symbolize a beginning for Warsaw, too.
Until Nazi Germany conquered Poland in 1939, 380,000 Jews lived in Warsaw-more than any city in the world except New York. After the slaughter and, later, a communist purge, only 10,000 remain in all of Poland. Of 400 Warsaw synagogues, only Nozyk remains.
