Festive Name Could Force Girl to Keep Feet Planted

About 500 people braved the rain to attend a celebration at Keene State College in New Hampshire to praise that most prolific of vegetables, the zucchini. The sixth annual festival, whose theme was “Zucchini: Gourd of Destiny,” featured such events as the zucchini peel-off, the zucchini look-alike contest, motorized zucchini, longest bicycle jump over a zucchini, best-dressed zucchini, best-matched zucchini and best zucchini rock video. Festivities also included a ceremony led by Harry Wolhandler and Peg Monahan of Keene, as they christened their 3-month-old daughter Jeannie Zucchini. “It’ll make her tough,” said the girl’s mother, a Keene city councilor. “It will make her real tough.” Or, as her father put it: “Starting from here, she has nowhere else to go but up.”

--About 50 guests, including family members, were invited to a birthday party Saturday for First Lady Nancy Reagan. Her birthday is actually July 6, but two longtime friends, Marion Jorgensen and Betty Wilson, regularly give her a party during the Reagans’ August visit to their Santa Barbara ranch. Although there has been some dispute about the year of her birth, spokeswoman Elaine Crispen said that Mrs. Reagan was born in 1923.

--It wasn’t the usual going-out-of-business sale when Chicago’s Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Museum invited the public to buy some of its relics before closing because of lack of attendance. For $220, Edward Allard took home a Styrofoam tombstone that read, “Here lies John Yeast. Pardon me for not rising,” some signs and a bloody mannequin he dubbed “the gory chick.” The mannequin had been displayed with a torture device, which wasn’t for sale. Neither was a shrunken head, a 5 3/4-pound hairball from a calf and a Ferris wheel made of 14,000 toothpicks. They will be shipped to Ripley museums in eight other cities. But one popular nightclub, the Limelight, bought 10 wax dummies, including that of the 7-year-old who died of old age, for about $1,500. And Bob and Kim Morris bought a witch. “We’re not into sorcery,” she said. “We just like weird stuff.” The couple thought the dummy would go nicely in their apartment next to the upright coffin that serves as a phone booth for their candlestick telephone.