* Please help: “Just saying no” hasn’t...

* Please help: “Just saying no” hasn’t been enough to drive drug dealers and gangs from the neighborhood, so Pickard Elementary School students wrote President Bush seeking his advice. Fourth-grade teacher Mary Sunny said 950 individually handwritten letters were sent to the White House from children at the school on Chicago’s South Side. “My neighborhood has drug users and gang bangers that kill people and scare little children on the block,” wrote Brenda Lee, a fifth-grader. “That’s why we don’t go outside. We need your help.”

* Big first birthday: Christy Andrews celebrates her first birthday Friday. That’s a remarkable achievement, because the Camden, N.J., girl weighed just 15 ounces when she was born three months prematurely and was given less than a 5% chance of survival.

* New golden oldie: Portions of “The Old Farmer’s Almanac,” the planter’s bible that’s been an institution for 198 years, will be available on videocassette next month--providing home remedies, gardening tips, offbeat features and weather forecasts. The hourlong tape is narrated by Willard Scott of NBC’s “Today” and features comedian Jonathan Winters passing on home remedies.

* Return: Author Kurt Vonnegut paid a surprise visit to the City News Bureau of Chicago where he worked as a cub reporter more than 40 years ago. “His first question was, ‘Where are the tubes?’ ” said managing editor Paul Zimbrakos referring to the pneumatic tubes that City News once used to transmit stories to clients.