Tibetans Tried to Butter Up Record-Setting Traveler

--George Chauncey Clouse remembers throwing his baby bottle off a 23rd-floor balcony in Portugal, nearly hitting someone on the street. “That was when I was a little kid,” he said with a grin. “I don’t remember it very much.” Chauncey, as he is called, is only 5 now, but he has visited 114 countries. That earned him a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most-traveled tot. His parents, John and Georgia Clouse of Evansville, Ind., travel “literally as soon as we have enough cash,” Georgia Clouse said. John Clouse is a lawyer who works 12-hour days to pay their way; his wife is a free-lance writer. Chauncey had no trouble choosing his worst experience: “In Tibet, they tried to smear yak butter on my eyes. Daddy put me on his shoulders so they wouldn’t get near me.” Georgia Clouse said the Tibetans apparently had never seen a Caucasian child before and used the yak butter to “anoint” him. Then there was the time elephants charged the family’s van in Sri Lanka. “We just turned our backs and drove away real quick.” But his favorite place, Chauncey said with another smile, is “right here in America.”

--Edmund Morris, who won a Pulitzer Prize for a book about Theodore Roosevelt, said he plans to write a biography of President Reagan. Morris confirmed reports that he is getting special access to the White House. “It was irresistible from a biographical point of view, and we have come to an arrangement,” he said.

--Geraldine A. Ferraro told a 10-nation conference on women and the media that, during her 1984 vice-presidential campaign with Democrat Walter F. Mondale, the press “seemed to have accepted the notion that a woman could not be informed about typically male topics--like foreign policy and national security.” But Greek culture minister and former actress Melina Mercouri was unimpressed. “I’m very glad to hear Miss Ferraro went through six months of torture,” Mercouri said. “I’ve been through 30 years of torture at the hands of the press.”

--Morganna Roberts, the top-heavy “kissing bandit” who has interrupted baseball games 12 times since 1970 to kiss players, says her “job” isn’t all hearts and flowers. Once, she said, security guards tackled her. “I ended up with three cracked ribs, and they got pictures of the rent-a-cops kicking at me and an old lady hitting me over the head with her umbrella.” Officials in Houston took Roberts to court for going on the field, but her attorney got her off with the law-of-gravity defense. Roberts, who measures 60-23-39, said her lawyer told the jury that “my 15-pound chest caused me to topple over the box-seat railing and onto the field.”