Miss Liberty Foamal Wear Is Hit

--A New York advertising and marketing executive says it was her love for the Statue of Liberty that inspired one of the hottest novelty items in town: a foam version of Miss Liberty’s crown. The one-size-fits-all, seven-point tiara has become a best-seller at street fairs and likely will crown many heads as tourists converge on the city for the Fourth of July festivities marking the statue’s centennial. Elizabeth Tyre said she formed Past Pluto Productions in 1984 to make and market the crown. (“I’ve always said when something outlandish happened, ‘Boy, that’s past Pluto. Way out there!’ ”) Her foam crown is the one officially recognized by the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, which receives a percentage of sales receipts. The statue’s form and likeness are in the public domain, however, and there is competition. The crowns, hawked by street vendors and sold in novelty shops, sell for $2.50 to $3.50. Orders have come in from around the nation. Tyre said she has been captivated by Miss Liberty since “a romantic day” at the statue in 1978: “It was a snowy day. We took the ferry over. Nobody was there. It was a moving experience,” she recalled. “The crown to me is her greatest symbol.”

--Comedienne Carol Burnett, in New Orleans to promote her latest book at the American Booksellers Assn. convention, says she long blamed herself for her parents’ alcoholism, but research for the book, “One More Time,” helped her to come to terms with their disease. Burnett said that she always knew her parents loved her, yet believed that their drinking was her fault: “I hated them at the time, and I took the blame for it, and I always thought that if they didn’t love me they wouldn’t be doing the things they were doing,” she said. Burnett said that she realized that her father had unintentionally transferred guilt for his addiction to her when she found a letter he had written her when she was a child. She quoted her father as saying in the letter that he had not drunk “one drop of hooch in three weeks, and I won’t have another as long as you love me and pray for me.”

--Jordan Brown, graduating from college in commencement exercises in Oberlin, Ohio, laughed all the way to his diploma. Brown, 22, of Williamsville, N.Y., earned a degree in humor from Oberlin College, a course he designed himself that covered a wide range of liberal arts, including philosophy. His professors took it all seriously: “Jordan had to put together his own curriculum, his own course work, and go through the faculty’s individual majors committee for approval. He is a very bright, serious student,” anthropology professor Jack Glazier said.