1963

Here's a good yarn with a happy end. Remember the tarot card reader last month allegedly hired to kill a man by psychic or other means" in Lehigh County, Pa.? Well, assistant district attorney Wally Eldridge, who got the county to try the case after a hearing, agreed not to pursue the matter. It seems that Cynthia Lynne Peters, accused of contracting the potentially "lethal" reader, has agreed to undergo court-ordered psychiatric counseling. The charge of criminal conspiracy has been dropped.

The ending was happy too in Providence, R.I., for the birds that is ... not for the nudists. U.S. District Court Judge ErnieTorres refused to require the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove a fence it has put up at the aptly named Moonstone Beach in South Kingstown to protect the nesting area of two endangered species, the piping plover and the least tern. The New England Naturist Association had sued, charging the fence violates its members' constitutional rights and was erected within the intertidal zone, recognized as public land by Rhode Island.

Then there is the scion of Benjamin Nathan Cardozo, associate justice of the United States Supreme Court who died in 1938. Our Cardozo, Michael Hart Cardozo V, joined 90 collateral descendants of the famous judge at a family reunion in Westport, Conn. On hand was Michael Alan Cardozo, also a lawyer. People are always mixing the two up, reported The New York Times, but the situation exacerbated when they both represented players in a recent deal. "Hello, this is Michael Cardozo. I'd like to speak with Michael Cardozo."

I met Jeff Galper, Hinesburg, Vt., a few years ago as he was launching his rolfing practice (an advanced form of physical manipulation designed to realign the human structure). So it 'didn't surprise me when Jeff, who holds a master's in social work from Columbia and a Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr, served as best man when his first wife, Miriam, married Herb Cohen four years ago. Why am I telling you all this? The New York Times cited Jeff as an example of how far the concept of joint custody has come since the mid-70s when tension or outright hostility between many divorced parents was the norm. In the article Miriam Galper Cohen considers Jeff a close friend of 24 years. Commented Jeffs present wife, Nicandra, "It's the way things should be between mature people." The big beneficiary though has been son Josh who was seven when Jeff and Miriam separated.

"The main benefit is that Josh has no need to feel disloyal for showing love to one family or the another," said Miriam.

And who says Princess Diana is a bimbo? Tom Berger does, or did in USA Today and then in his hometown Watertown Daily Times near St. Lawrence University, where he is professor of English, Shakespearean scholar and, yes, an Anglophile. USA Today sought Tom's comments in seeking to explain a seeming rift between the royal twosome. Charles "has grown intellectually. He's finally got something to think about other than riding horses," said Tom. A Duke Ph.D., Tom taught English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, followed by a year at Macalester College. He's been at St. Lawrence since 1971, and was director of the university's semester in London program in 1986.

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