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The Wrong Way to Put Gorbachev in the Picture

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Gorby, is that you? Or: Who was that Sergeyevich?

Of all the aspects of the upcoming Soviet arts festival, none is more ambitious or unprecedented than the effort to involve local schoolchildren.

A committee chaired by San Diego State University history professor Jess Flemion has been working since January to ensure that as many children as possible participate in the festival free of charge.

Indeed, the numbers are impressive: 140,000 children will be bused to see the Faberge eggs, the Georgian folk dancers, the folk arts, the marionettes and rehearsals of the opera and symphony; 100,000 will have folk dancers, circus performers and artisans brought to their schools.

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To help teachers incorporate Soviet history, culture and art into their lesson plans, Flemion’s committee developed two multicolored, glossy-paged curriculum guides: one for elementary-school teachers, one for secondary-school teachers.

To date, 600 teachers have attended workshops and 10,000 curriculum guides have been distributed to public, private and Catholic schools.

However, as they say in the Ukraine, the bigger the harvest, the greater the chance of being stuck by a thistle.

Take that quarter-page picture of Soviet boss Mikhail S. Gorbachev on Page 16 of the secondary school guide. Hammer and sickle in the background, Gorbachev with his strong yet friendly visage.

There’s a problem.

It isn’t Gorbachev. It’s a fun-loving real estate agent and Gorbachev look-alike Ronald Knapp from Huntington Beach.

When Gorbachev went to New York, Knapp hired a limousine and drove through Manhattan waving to pedestrians. Knapp came to San Diego last year for the Air/Space America show.

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That’s how his mug made its way into the picture files of the San Diego Union-Tribune. When Flemion’s committee asked for pictures of Gorbachev, Nicholas II and Lenin, Knapp’s picture mistakenly was included in the pile.

Flemion is chagrined but not downbeat. She hopes the mix-up will provide something extra that teachers can use in their classrooms.

“Maybe,” Flemion says, “they can do a lesson on being very careful about all the details of what you’re doing.”

Political Falling Out

Try one, they’re free:

* Not all is happy in the “new politics” camp.

Linda Bernhardt, runoff opponent of Councilman Ed Struiksma, is being sued for $2,000 by her former political consultant, Larry Remer.

Remer says Bernhardt owes his firm for consulting services and polling. Bernhardt says she never saw the complete poll and was annoyed when Remer, not Tom Shepard, was “assigned” to her campaign.

* The Marine Corps is having terrible trouble finding volunteers to guard U. S. embassies and consulates.

About 1,400 Marine guards are assigned to 127 countries, but the scandal involving guards at the embassy in Moscow has taken the bloom off the duty. A recruiting team recently visited Camp Pendleton.

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Hometown Decision

As it did once before, the Escondido Times-Advocate has chosen corporate kinship over geographic fidelity.

The T-A on Monday had a full-page, full-color ad congratulating the Chicago Cubs for winning the Eastern Division of the National League. The Times-Advocate is owned by the (Chicago) Tribune Co., which also owns the Cubs.

In ‘84, the T-A ran a similar ad when the Cubs won the East and the Padres won the West. North County Padres fans smelled disloyalty and reacted angrily. This year: no reaction.

Still, T-A publisher John Armstrong, remembering the ’84 uproar, hastens to note that Monday’s ad was not a freebie: The Tribune Co. paid full cost. He would gladly sell space to the Padres.

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