Reach for the stars: The University of...

Reach for the stars: The University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau has set its sights high for a speaker at next spring’s commencement: Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. “My feeling is there can be no way to find out unless you ask,” said Prof. Wallace Olson, who suggested the invitation. Chancellor Marshall Lind said he was told the request is being considered in Moscow.

Scentimental over you: Tammy Faye Bakker tearfully told her flock in Orlando, Fla., that her separation from husband Jim Bakker, serving 45 years for fraud, has been hard. She said that she still hasn’t washed the pillowcases on their bed so the scent of his after-shave will linger. She also said that when prison officials handed her Bakker’s wallet “I hugged it and hugged it because it was like a little piece of Jim.”

No cover-up: A mural of the late guitarist Jimi Hendrix at a high school won’t be whitewashed despite a petition by students who object to the rock star’s drug life style. “I hesitate to accept that Jimi Hendrix’s life and work can or should be condensed into, ‘He is a symbol of drug abuse,’ ” Ridgefield, Conn., High School Principal Elaine Bessette said.