Fog Can’t Stop ‘Em, by George!

--It’s no lie. The residents of a certain town in Washington state won’t let anything--not even bad weather--interfere with their special holiday. So it was no surprise that about 250 people ignored dense fog to gather at the Community Hall in George, Wash., and celebrate the 255th birthday of the first U.S. President. A traditional highlight was the door-size cake, baked by a group of women known as the Georgettes. The 3-by-6-foot cake “has an eagle with a flag and a portrait of George Washington in the frosting,” Mary Garrison, a member of the celebration committee, said. Those who didn’t want cake could go to Martha’s Inn on Interstate 90 for cherry pie or cherry cobbler.

--For those who worry that eating too much cherry pie or other desserts and junk food isn’t good for them, an experiment conducted by a St. Petersburg, Fla., seventh-grader may be of interest. Ezra Wise devised his project, “Nutrition--Is It Really Good For You?” for the 1987 Pinellas County Regional Science and Engineering Fair. He kept two rats in cages in his bedroom and fed them radically different diets: Tom ate pizza, pretzels, brownies, cupcakes and ice cream while Jerry lived on seeds, grain, rat pellets and other wholesome foods. Ezra watched the rats for about five months. Tom was perky; Jerry lacked vitality. Last month, Jerry died. The project did not win a prize at the fair. What did Ezra learn? “I think healthy food is better for you, but I’m still going to eat a lot of junk food.”

--Another Florida student had more success with academic endeavor. When third-grader Jason Padgett came across the question: “What planet has rings?” in a textbook, it had a false ring for him. The answer called for in the text was Saturn, but Jason had read in National Geographic magazine that rings had been discovered around the planet Uranus. The 8-year-old polled 100 shoppers at a supermarket near his Altamonte Springs home and found that only 3% of them knew about the rings. So, to educate some of those on his own planet, Jason wrote the text’s publisher, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, to point out the mistake. In a written reply, the publisher admitted the error and said it would be corrected in the next edition.

--William Shawn, retiring editor of The New Yorker, would not take part in a farewell party in his honor but sent the staff a note explaining that his “feelings at this perplexed moment are too strong for farewells.” Shawn, the weekly magazine’s editor for 35 years, wrote, “What matters most is that you and I, working together, taking strength from the inspiration that our first editor, Harold Ross, gave us, have tried constantly to find and say what is true.”