Marking the Era: Arthur Miller, author of...

Marking the Era: Arthur Miller, author of “The Crucible,” a play about the Salem witch trials, will join the city in its 300th anniversary observation of the witchcraft hysteria. Miller will attend the Nov. 14 unveiling of the winning design for a memorial to those executed during the 1692 trials.

* Mind Control: Virginia Lamp Thomas, 34, wife of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, has a special mission as well as an important job in the Bush Administration. “I was once in a group that used mind control techniques,” she said Wednesday. “They are pretty scary people.” She refused to name the group, and said she is now part of a network that informs young people about the dangers of cults. Lamp Thomas is deputy assistant secretary of labor for congressional and intergovernmental affairs.

* Silent Cal: A letter with a rare emotional outpouring from Calvin Coolidge, the President dubbed “Silent Cal,” was recently added to the main public collection of his personal papers in Northampton, Mass. The nation’s 30th President had written cobbler James Lucey, a homespun philosopher who had been Coolidge’s mentor: “I want you to know that if it were not for you I should not be here and I want to tell you how much I love you.”

* Not Caving In: Emily Davis Mobley, who gained national attention this spring when she was rescued from a 1,565-foot-deep New Mexico cave where her leg had been broken, is anxious to return to the caverns. “Since the accident, I’ve only been in . . . a show cave and one little, tiny cave about 30 feet long,” said Mobley in Cobleskill, N.Y. Doctors said she has about about eight months to go before she can go exploring again.