Burnett Gives Moscow Dry Advice on Just Saying Nyet

--The language is different but the problems are the same, actress Carol Burnett said in Moscow of Soviet and American alcoholics. “The feelings are the same. The love is the same,” Burnett told reporters during an informal meeting sponsored by the Soviet-U.S. Joint Conference on Alcoholism and Drug Addiction. Burnett, daughter of two alcoholics and mother of a daughter who struggled with drug addiction, arrived in Moscow on Friday. On Saturday, Burnett and her daughter, Carrie Hamilton, talked about addiction for three hours to Soviets who phoned two numbers published by the youth newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda. Few callers knew much about the comedian and her daughter, but Burnett said it didn’t matter. Callers were given a telephone number they could call for further help. Burnett is to address Moscow foreign-language students today and appear on television Tuesday. Her visit is sponsored by state-run radio and television.

--Herbert Connolly, a candidate for reelection to the Massachusetts Governor’s Council, has a story for all those who think their one vote doesn’t matter. Connolly lost his state primary election by just one vote: his own. The 67-year-old Democrat said he failed to cast a ballot because he got to the polls minutes after they closed. “I was campaigning in Waltham, and I waited until the last minute to race over” to vote, he said. A recount showed Connolly, a car dealer, with 14,715 votes. His opponent got 14,716. “I guess he could be a future poster boy for the secretary of state’s get-out-the vote campaign,” said Connolly’s attorney, William Galvin. The eight-member Governor’s Council dates from Colonial times. Its chief remaining duties are to approve criminal pardons and confirm judges nominated by the governor. Connolly, who has been a council member since 1969, is protesting the election, claiming that some ballots are missing and others are invalid. Galvin said he would go to court to ask that the primary be invalidated.

--President Reagan is helping the Boys Club of Wales raise $507,000 for its 60th anniversary appeal fund. Club spokesman Jim Paterson said in Port Talbot, Wales, that Reagan’s gift, a medallion marking the 25th anniversary in 1978 of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidential inauguration, will be auctioned to raise money, as will a rare clock donated by Queen Mother Elizabeth. “The Boys Club movement is very big in America with several in each major city, and we are thrilled the President has sent us this very rare medallion,” Paterson said.