Expert Tutors Scholars With a Crash Course in Civics

President Bush offered a lesson in civic responsibility to 141 teen-agers who are this year’s Presidential Scholars. Calling them “some of the best and brightest students in American education,” Bush said: “While already you’ve done much, I know you will do more--and not for yourselves alone, but for nation and neighbor.” Bush was joined by his wife, Barbara, and Secretary of Education Lauro F. Cavazos for the White House ceremony. The scholars were chosen by a commission. They were treated in Washington to a five-day whirlwind of seminars, speeches, dinners and festivities that concludes today.

--Buckingham Palace has some uninvited guests. A spokeswoman for Britain’s royal family said that experts had been called in to fight off Guernsey carpet beetles, whose hairy grubs are munching their way through carpets in several rooms. But she declined to comment on reports that the insects had also devoured dresses belonging to the Duchess of York, the wife of Prince Andrew. Pest control expert Peter Bateman said the grubs, nicknamed “woolly bears” because they are covered in brown hairs, are “fairly tough little blighters.” He added: The beetles “are often brought into homes in second-hand clothing, but I don’t think Her Majesty would have too much of that around.”

--In the 30th anniversary year of his best known artwork, Frank Gasparro is still not a household name. Gasparro designed the tails side of the penny that replaced the wheat-back penny in 1959. His initials can be found to the right of the Lincoln Memorial’s base. Occasionally when he gets a penny in change, he will point out his work to the cashier. “I’ll say: ‘I designed it, you can see my initials if you’ve got good eyesight,’ ” the former chief engraver of the United States, who worked at the Philadelphia Mint, said. As the man who designed the Susan B. Anthony dollar, he is the only living person to have sculpted the front and back of a general-circulation U.S. coin. He also designed the back of the John F. Kennedy half dollar. Gasparro recalled that when he presented his penny design, his superiors told him to remove the words “Lincoln Memorial” and 13 stars around the edge of the coin. Gasparro agreed, but refused to take out his initials and the tiny statue of Lincoln between the sixth and seventh columns, two features his boss said would look like smudges of dirt.