Walk of Fame: “Georgia on My Mind”...

Walk of Fame: “Georgia on My Mind” crooner Ray Charles, former President Jimmy Carter and home run king Hank Aaron were among 10 people enshrined last week as the first members of the Atlanta Celebrity Walk. The others were: architect John Portman, former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., author Margaret Mitchell, anesthesia developer Crawford W. Long, Coca-Cola mogul Robert W. Woodruff and Girl Scouts founder Juliette Gordon Low.

Pure Poetry: Joseph Brodsky, a Soviet exile who is the new U.S. poet laureate, wants Americans to get to know their poets. “The pure volume of American poetry produced in this century has no rival in the world,” Brodsky said Friday, but “it is not known to the nation.” Brodsky, winner of the 1987 Nobel Prize for literature, was born in Leningrad and dropped out of school at 15. He served 18 months in a Soviet labor camp for writing poems without the proper academic credentials.

Re-leaf: Iowa horticulturists are trying to grow a new tree from a split century-old black maple that shades the birthplace of former President Herbert Hoover. Prof. Larry Gilds is placing new growth cuttings in a hormone solution in an attempt to get roots. The maple is slated to be cut down when the Hoover cottage is remodeled in October.

Goin’ for Broke: A Nevada gambler who scraped together the $10,000 entry fee at the last minute claimed the winning pot in the World Series of Poker last week. Brad Daugherty won a $1-million first prize after staging a grand comeback. More than once, he bet all the chips he had to stay alive. Daugherty, 39, didn’t have the $10,000 buy-in fee until a friend anted up the money five minutes before the game began. “I had been playing so well, so I gave it a shot,” Daugherty said.