Australian Game Turns Up in Schools

Subversion is where you find it. Even so, mates being mates and all that, one of the last fellowships one would suspect of undermining the very fabric of American society is the Australian Trade Commission (Austrade).

It started innocently enough. (It always does.) Over the course of May, an Austrade delegation visited four local school districts--San Bernardino, Long Beach, Garden Grove, San Diego--to demonstrate something called Kanga Ball. Ostensible aim: introduction of “a simple game in which every grammar-school kid can take part; nobody is left out.” So said L.A.-based Austrade spokesman Mike Kerr. “There’s batting, throwing, catching, running,” Kerr explained innocently. “The kids loved it. They picked up the game in seconds. They wouldn’t put the bloody thing down to go back to class. . . .”

Left unexplained was the presence of one Graham Halbish as chief demonstrator of Kanga Ball. Halbish, it turns out, is general manager of the Australian Cricket Board, “the Bart Giamatti of cricket,” Kerr finally confessed under duress, “the god of the game.” Perfidious Adelaide!

Equipment--of non-injurious soft plastic--consists of two bats, a ball and (get this!) two molded-plastic wickets. Pitchers throw toward one of two (!) batters at opposite ends of a “pitch,” trying to upend a wicket. Batters may hit the ball (“snick” it, Kerr said, digging himself deeper) any which way, including behind him or her. Fielders (“any number you want; everybody plays”) stop the ball. . . .

The beauty part: “Each kid gets the same number of pitches, no ‘three strikes and out.’ We have a million youngsters playing in Australia, learning basic motor skills, having a ball. We’ve already sold 300 sets (at $85) in Canada. Only soccer is simpler: All you need is a ball--and a steel fence to separate the fans. . . .”

All well and good, Kerr was told, but what of a child’s allegiance, as limned by Bill Lee? “Who’s Bill Lee?” Kerr asked. It was Lee, of course, ex-Boston pitcher and presidential candidate (Rhinoceros Party), who said it all: “Baseball is the bellybutton of America.”

2,900 Miles Left on Cross-Country Trail to Save the Forests

Lucian Spataro calls from a phone booth on Interstate 10, somewhere between Banning and the village of Cabazon. Outside the booth, Sweet William, a gray 8-year-old Arabian gelding, paws the baked earth, anxious to hit the road again. “Lookin’ good,” Spataro says. “Only 2,900 miles to go.”

Later in the day, they would hunker down for the evening in a deserted house next to a truck stop. Earlier in the morning (“ real early; we started at 4”), Spataro and his steed had been flagged down by a carload of strangers, handed a check for $1,000, wished Godspeed.

The thou--and a lot more like it, they hope--will go to the Rainforest Action Network, an activist group bent on saving the world’s tropical rain forests from further, perhaps fatal, depredation. Doing his bit for the cause, Spataro will ride Sweet William coast to coast. They started May 18 in Huntington Beach surf. They’ll finish in New York in October.

“Interesting,” Network chief Randy Hayes says, “that the horse is bred in the desert, which is what the forest will be unless the world stops cutting it down for teak and mahogany, for cattle range. Along with donations, we hope to initiate a huge letter-writing campaign through Lucian’s ride.”

“It’s not that hard a ride,” Spataro says from his phone booth. “We do 20-25 miles in the cool of the mornings. The cavalry used to do 40-50 for months. The wagon trains too, pulling Ma, Pa and the kitchen sink. . . .”

Sweet William, meanwhile, is taking it all in stride. “We trained him in traffic,” Spataro says, “so he’s very street-wise--and a real character. Great personality; great attitude. Great cause. See you.”

(Grand)Mother of Many Talents Is Center of Family’s Fete

Back in Vienna, her parents pushed the piano. Ever the dutiful daughter, Margaret Ree practiced until accomplished enough to give concerts. Deep inside, though, she preferred molars to Mahler.

Other girls play with dolls. Ree’s “first toys were teeth,” she recalls. “My father was a dentist, and I wanted to be one. I played my first recital at 7, but what pleased me more was that I made my first set of false teeth at 8.” The year, though, was 1902, and female dentists were unheard of, even in Freud’s enlightened arrondissement .

In time, sometime around 1917, Ree did become a dentist, Vienna’s first. It was another hobby, however, that stood her in best stead: “My mother had one of those newfangled sewing machines, and I was given lessons in how to use it. I made my grandmother a dress when I was 11 or 12. . . .”

In 1938, Ree fled Austria just ahead of Hitler. For a time, she worked for an underground Zurich paper, then took the Queen Mary to New York. Viennese diplomas did not excite the U.S. dental establishment, so Ree took work as a seamstress. In 1946, her second husband, a small businessman, took her to California “on condition that I never work again in my life. He didn’t need to ask twice.”

Ree became “the family matriarch,” says granddaughter Joanie Graham, with whom Ree now lives in Beverly Hills. (Ree also took up bridge at 69, and as a Golden Age Master, still plays tournament bridge three times a week, “though I’m just an average player now.”)

On June 10, Graham is throwing a spectacular party at the St. James Club on Sunset in honor of Ree’s 95th birthday. The theme is “Royalty.” “For her family,” Graham says, “she’s always been a queen.”