Comics to Give Thought for Food

--A big-nosed beagle, a mild-mannered Yale graduate and a fighter pilot are among the new recruits in the fight against starvation, as more than 100 top cartoonists plan to devote their Thanksgiving strips to world hunger. Steve Canyon is the pilot, the Yalie is Michael Doonesbury and the beagle is Snoopy. Their respective creators--Milton Caniff, Garry Trudeau and Charles Schulz--are the moving force behind the Thanksgiving project. “It’s PR hype, but the world’s PR hype,” Caniff said. “It looks like it’s going to be a blockbuster.” So far, 114 cartoonists have joined the project, including “all of the biggest names,” and more are expected, Trudeau spokesman David Stamford said. “The response has been great. It looks like pretty much the entire comics page will be devoted to hunger,” Stamford said. Schulz conceded that it’s not easy to handle a serious subject like hunger within the bounds of a comic strip. But he asked: “Any time you try to say something funny, you’re risking yourself, aren’t you?”

--A retired postal official who had to choose work over college nearly 60 years ago has become the oldest student ever enrolled at Yale University, the New Haven, Conn., school announced. John Armstrong, 79, is working toward a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts. He was graduated from high school in New York City in 1926 and got a job to help support his family. He later served in the Army during World War II and worked for 30 years in the U.S. Postal Service Administration, retiring in 1966 when, at age 60, he took up a new career as a ski instructor and ski equipment representative. Armstrong, who still works part-time as a ski instructor, felt something was still missing from his life. So he enrolled at Norwalk Community College in 1983 and completed work on an associate in arts degree, earning A’s in 19 of the classes and B’s in the remaining two. Student Armstrong is continuing his new-found interest in literature at Yale, where he is taking a French literature course taught in French, which he learned while he was a prisoner of war.

--In Newent, England, Frederick Cooper, 85, knew what to do when his ladder fell and he found himself stuck high up in the tree he was pruning. He pulled a cordless telephone from his pocket and called the fire brigade. But they didn’t believe him. So, after waiting half an hour, he called the police. They sent two men to get him down. When asked how he happened to have a cordless phone with him at the top of a tree, Cooper replied: “I was a Boy Scout when I was younger.” And all Boy Scouts remember their motto: “Be prepared!”