Astronauts: No Star Treatment

--Some astronauts were less than star-struck when they had to attend a briefing by singer John Denver on his plans to fly on a Soviet space mission. About 50 of NASA’s finest showed up for the meeting at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, and though Denver had specified that it be closed and off the record, some astronauts and other sources told the Houston Chronicle that the meeting ranged from hostile to dynamic. Many astronauts oppose sharing spaceflights with the Soviet Union, and when Denver told them the Soviets also had invited other Americans to join a mission, one of them reportedly shouted: “Who? Jane Fonda?” Denver, a jet pilot and longtime space program supporter, had been unable to get the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to let him fly on a space shuttle, so he has been talking to the Soviets. Denver said the State Department has approved the effort. The Soviets require that he learn Russian and be able to spend a year training in their country. Chief NASA astronaut Dan Brandenstein arranged the briefing, saying he believed that it would help the astronauts to be familiar with the plans of the singer, who also had the support of NASA Administrator James C. Fletcher and Secretary of State George P. Shultz. But one veteran astronaut summed up the briefing this way: “A waste of our time and an insult to the astronauts who had better things to do.”

--When Victoria DeBon and another sheriff’s deputy raided a Center, Pa., mall for jurors, some of the prospective peers didn’t buy their story, and called local police to report them as imposters, DeBon said. The Common Pleas Court had exhausted its jury pool just before a murder trial was to begin, so Judge Robert Kunselman invoked a state law providing for the collection of jurors. The deputies gave summonses to 13 shoppers to appear the next morning, after asking if they met the requirements for jury duty: American citizenship, Beaver County residence and ability to read and write. “The word must have gotten around the mall, because people approaching us were saying they were from West Virginia or out of the county before we could even open our mouths,” DeBon said.

--The Winnetka Park District has voted to rename a 20-acre park in the Chicago suburb in memory of Nicholas Corwin, an 8-year-old who was killed May 20 when a mentally disturbed woman opened fire on his second-grade class. Four of his classmates were wounded at Hubbard Woods Elementary School by Laurie Dann, who later wounded a college student and committed suicide.