Solar System Sold Out; Moonscape on Auction Block

--How would you like to buy that little piece of the moon you’ve always dreamed about? Donations start at $25 for a small crater 30 miles in diameter and go as high as $1,000 for the Sea of Tranquility, Apollo 11’s landing site. “Neil Armstrong walked on it,” says the brochure from the exclusive real estate agent, the Boston Museum of Science. “Now you can own it.” The tongue-in-cheek listings are meant to raise money for the museum. “We started selling moon craters about two weeks ago,” said Barry Burlingham, the museum’s director of development. “We’ve had over 100 inquiries, but we’ve sold just a handful, really. We’re just getting going.” Seas and oceans sell for $500 and buyers provide their own transportation. Burlingham said he chose to sell the moon because the museum already has sold the sun, the planets--Saturn’s rings were sold separately--and many stars in previous fund-raising campaigns. A landowner’s rights include “landing, moon walking, flag planting . . . and Earth watching.” In addition, property holders agree to “liberally dispense any and all Swiss cheese in his or her domain to hungry space travelers,” which could include “cows jumping over the premises.”

--Opera star Luciano Pavarotti says there are few challenges left for him as a singer, but he won’t go into conducting or make any more movies. “If I do anything else but sing, I will teach, or perhaps do staging,” but it apparently won’t be movie-making, the 49-year-old Italian tenor said in Columbus, Ohio. He said his last movie, “Yes, Giorgio,” was not a box office success.

--”I feel numb. If it’s a dream, I hope I never wake up,” Jorja Frances Oberly said, adding that she looks forward to traveling and hopes she can well represent all Indian people. Oberly had just been crowned the 30th Miss Indian America in Bismarck, N.D., winning out over 19 other contestants. Oberly, 23, of Kooskia, Ida., is part Osage, part Comanche and part Nez Perce Indian, said Dennis Neumann, a member of the pageant’s governing board. Picked as alternate was Laurel Ileen Anquoe, 23, a Kiowa and Onondaga Indian from Norman, Okla., Neumann said. The winner receives a $3,000 scholarship, a monthly stipend of $200 and a clothing allowance.