Hard labor just isn`t in Athena Chisholm`s maternity makeup. Either that, or husband Tom is a conspicuously slow driver. Two years ago, Chisholm, of Merrimack, N.H., was en route to a hospital when son Paul popped out in the back seat of the family Subaru. Last weekend, it happened again-this time in the front seat. ”The baby was sliding out. All I could do was catch her,”
said Mom, 30, who fielded a 7 pound 10 ounce girl.
DIVORCE, ER, MAID TO ORDER Anyone with an ex can appreciate Alana Stewart`s sad, brave struggle to part company from her rock singer husband, Rod. Separated for five years but still unable to break away, poor Alana has scraped by on only $25,000. ”If you go to the grocery store, the prices are outrageous. It would be a load off my mind to get the whole thing settled,” she told People magazine. By the way, that $25,000. It`s monthly.
IT`S AN OLD, FAMILIAR RING Speaking of divorce, actors James Farentino and Michele Lee are pairing up for a TV movie of a couple in a rocky marriage who end up committing anew. In real life, Farentino and Lee were married for 15 years and divorced in 1981. ”Sure, it`s an atypical relationship,” Farentino told TV Guide,
”even in this business.”
CRUISING FOR A BRUISING Okay girls, take aim: USA Today founder Al Neuharth, reduced now to flying first-class after two decades on Gannett`s corporate jet, is catching flak for his appeal to airlines to return to ”skygirls” of yesterday-i.e. pleasantly contoured stewardesses. In a newspaper column last Friday, Neuharth nostalgically recalled ”young, attractive, enthusiastic female flight attendants.” Their modern replacements, he wrote, are ”aging women who are tired of their jobs” and ”flighty young men” who can`t serve coffee-tea-or-me without spilling. And how would Gannett`s retired CEO make commercial passage more palatable? For starters, a return to vital statistics- unmarried female nurses, under 25, under 5-foot-5 and under 115 pounds. Not surprisingly, Monday`s USA Today carried an unusually lengthy response-it was more than 5 paragraphs-by 175 newsroom employees who are ”offended, outraged and embarrassed” by their ex-boss` ”bigoted and insulting” utterances. Add to that an angry retort by Susan Bianchi-Sand, a flight attendant of 20 years and head of the Association of Flight Attendants: ”Al Neuharth is either a Neanderthal or some sort of court jester.”
GALWAY: I`LL PAY TO PLAY A musical score in Switzerland has flutist James Galway playing to catch a thief. Someone stole Galway`s railway luggage in Lucerne, making off with five gold-plated flutes, three of which are studded with diamonds. Galway, who values them at $30,000 each and is offering a 10 percent reward, is curiously optimistic for their return. Fencing them would be conspicuously difficult, he said: ”It`s like trying to sell a (stolen) Formula One car” at the Grand Prix.
VICTORY`S SWEET SMELL Jason Koch put his best foot forward. But-whew!-it was a real stinker. Jason, 13, has won the ”smelliest shoes” contest in Newburyport, Mass., with a pair of dirt-bike sneakers that were smelled 10 feet away. ”They were filthy, rotten, dirty, full of holes and they stunk really bad,” sniffed contest chairwoman Joan Martin. Scores of dejected contestants think they were barely nosed out. But according to the sponsor, Odor-Eaters shoe inserts, Jason was a shoe-in.
