Sculptor Touches Totem Spirits With a 10-Foot Pole

--Before guest speaker Richard Craig (Blackfoot) Anderson arrived, Sahuaro High School in Tucson did not have a totem pole--and didn’t seem to mind. But Blackfoot, as he prefers to be known, set about remedying the deficiency anyway. The 10-foot totem pole on which he’s working as a gift will have a cougar, Sahuaro’s mascot, at its base and an eagle at the top. Blackfoot says the eagle will protect the school. The wood’s spirit will be released when the totem is finished. “It has eyes, ears and feelings,” he said. “The spirit was already in the wood before it became a telephone pole. It shows me where to carve, so it can get out.” At 37, Blackfoot is working on his 4,524th totem creation. His other works range in size from 1 inch to 85 feet, he said. One Sahuaro student said rumor has it that students from a rival school might steal the pole, or perhaps spray-paint it. But that doesn’t trouble Blackfoot, who sometimes gets as much as $300 a foot for his work. “I don’t worry about desecration,” he said. The spirit says, ‘You destroy me, I’ll destroy you.’ ”

--Country music star Johnny Cash was told to take it easy for a while when he left a Nashville hospital where he underwent abdominal surgery last week, Irene Gibbs, his personal secretary, said. Cash, 53, had an operation on April 22 to remove scar tissue and adhesions from surgery he had in 1983, Gibbs said.

--Singer Lena Horne and Nobel Prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer were among recipients of the New York Governor’s Arts Awards. Gov. Mario M. Cuomo served as host at the awards ceremony. Horne was honored for her commitment “to the highest standards in the arts.” Singer was saluted for a lifetime of literary activity. Among others receiving the awards, created by Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller in 1966, were philanthropist Brooke Astor, painter Willem de Kooning and film maker Sidney Lumet.

--It didn’t take long for Big Deuce IV, the donkey mascot of Ft. Sill’s 2nd Battalion, 2nd Field Artillery, to show that he still has no respect for the military way of life. The donkey, in disgrace last year because he lay down at the feet of his handler while the National Anthem was played during a Memorial Day ceremony, was given a second chance and promoted to honorary sergeant while the troops were mustered in Lawton, Okla. Big Deuce showed what he thought of the ceremony by taking a bite out of his certificate of promotion.