Kazoo Was the Buzzword in This New Year’s Songfest

Getting a New Year’s Eve buzz on in Rochester, N.Y., has nothing to do with spirits, except for some mischievous ones that each year compel thousands of kazoo players to bring in the New Year here with a drone instead of a bang. The estimated crowd of 60,000 this year bettered the 54,000-person chorus last year, which had hummed its way to the title of world’s largest outdoor kazoo concert. “We had one more bridge full than normal,” Gregory Smith, chairman of the Rochester Downtown Program Trust Fund, said of the scene by the city’s Genesee River. “It was unbelievable.” Rochester’s sister cities overseas even got in the act via a satellite telephone hookup. Before the traditional midnight rendition of “Auld Lang Syne,” the crowd--which included some kazoo-less members who just sang or whistled along--beamed such internationally recognizable songs as “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” and “Roll Out the Barrel” to Waterford, Ireland, Rehovot, Israel, and Krakow, Poland, while technical problems ruled out a planned link with Banako, Mali. Seven strategically placed microphones picked up the humming revelers, and a loudspeaker system allowed the players to hear the resounding buzz from overseas.

--A matter of minutes will mean a year’s difference in the birth dates of twins born as the year 1986 was winding down. In Conroe, Tex., Elizabeth Marie Adkins was born at 11:53 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, with her sister, Jennifer Lynn, following at 12:03 a.m. New Year’s Day. In Albany, N.Y., Laura Beth Regimbald came into the world at 11:46 p.m. New Year’s Eve, beating her sister, Karen Ann, by 17 minutes. Karen Ann checked in at 12:03 on the first day of the year.

--It is not a pretty time, believes novelist James Michener, who has pronounced the 1980s the Ugly Decade. In an essay in the New York Times, the author of such voluminous works as “Hawaii,” “Texas” and “Centennial” says the decade is a period marked by a “general know-nothingness in which evading critical problems is a substitute for grappling with them.” Michener declares there is too much emphasis on getting rich and blames the White House for many of the decade’s problems. “For the first time that I can recall in my work abroad, other nations are laughing at us, especially since we spent the last several years lecturing them sanctimoniously to avoid the very errors we were secretly committing,” he says in reference to the Iran- contras controversy. Michener calls on President Reagan to shun the “windy macho verbalisms” in favor of honest talk on the issue.