Main Stream: Prince Charles said in London...

Main Stream: Prince Charles said in London he’s pleased that ecological concerns are no longer considered “dotty” or “just for people with sandals and long hair.” Hosting the television documentary “The Earth in Balance” for BBC television late last week, Charles warned of the increasing fragility of the Earth. “Unless we alter our approach I believe that we shall, sooner rather than later, face a reckoning.”

Rhyme and Reason: Prize-winning lyric poet Mark Strand, best known for his themes of human darkness, Friday was named the 1990-91 “poet laureate consultant” at the Library of Congress. Strand, 56, is the fourth poet to be named laureate in the poetry consultant chair at the Library of Congress. Librarian of Congress James Billington praised Strand for his “versatility and inventiveness.”

A First: The death of Garry Trudeau’s “Doonesbury” comic strip character Andy Lippincott, from AIDS, didn’t prompt any angry phone calls, the strip’s syndicator said in Kansas City, Mo., Friday. “It wasn’t a big shock at all,” said Lee Salem, editorial director for Universal Press. But Andy’s death was apparently the first time AIDS killed a comic strip figure.

New World: Philanthropist Armand Hammer awarded diplomas to 106 students from 63 countries at the graduation Friday of the Armand Hammer United World College of the American West in Montezuma, N.M. Hammer, 92, said that a year ago few would have believed that “the Berlin Wall would come tumbling down and the Stalinist regimes in . . . Eastern Europe would fall.” The New Mexico college is one of seven in different countries that emphasize international understanding. Hammer will attend the summit Wednesday between Mikhail Gorbachev and George Bush.