Council Tackles Hairy Problem

--City officials in Stafford, Kan., are going out of their way to help residents get clipped--to get their hair clipped, that is. The only barber shop in this town of 1,400 closed about six months ago, and the City Council has voted to help anyone interested in the job obtain financing from the local bank and the Small Business Administration. “A barber they have to have, like a doctor or a dentist,” banker Hugh Patchin Jr. says. Stafford had three barbers two years ago, but two retired and the third left town. For now, former barber shop patrons frequent local beauty salons or make the eight-mile trek to St. John. “I think it boils down to how comfortable you feel about going into a beautician’s establishment, and there are some who just won’t do it,” Councilman Rod Roush said. “There’s just something about going down to the barber shop, getting in the chair, and shooting the breeze.”

--B.J. Thomas, Loretta Lynn and Emmylou Harris are among musicians who have volunteered their voices to help teach music to Nashville schoolchildren. The artists are recording songs such as “Hickory Dickory Dock” and other childhood favorites and producing a music book that will be used in the elementary schools. “It will be used as a supplement to our basic music program,” said Leonard Morton, coordinator of music education for the school system. “In certain instances where teachers are not musical, they will find this a helpful tool.”

--Most people donate money or blood, but John Van Hise of Buckingham, Fla., has made an unusual donation. Van Hise has given Miami’s Metro Zoo a poison-spitting cobra he found in his sister’s backyard. “Within a second, it flared its neck,” Van Hise said of the snake he found in a woodpile. “I said, ‘That’s a cobra.’ Everybody jumped back. I just had on tennis shoes and shorts and there was a cobra at my feet.” Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission officials picked up the deadly Asian snake and took it to the zoo. Game Commissioner Lt. Kathleen Kelley said it probably escaped from someone who keeps reptiles. “It didn’t look like it had been in the wild,” she said.

--Author James A. Michener, whose most recent novel was “Texas,” is leaving that state and moving to Florida for two years to write a novel about the Caribbean. The University of Texas, where the Pulitzer Prize winner is a professor emeritus, announced that Michener will begin using facilities at the University of Miami in Coral Gables in December. “I have long wanted to write about the Caribbean, an area I have known well for many years, and now seems the right time to do it,” Michener said.