NEW YORK NOTEBOOK : Missing--One Donkey

The Alabama Democrats are missing a donkey and they think the Republicans stole it. Her name is Irene and for 15 years she has been the beloved symbol of the party in Alabama, according to Dr. Willie L. Kirk, a Tuskegee, Ala., delegate who reported the loss to officers at Lew’s New York hotel. The donkey was missing from a trailer parked in the hotel garage, Kirk said. He described Irene as “brown, long-eared, blue-eyed, white nose, always with a smile on her face.”

Record-Breaking Garbage

The Democrats may be trying to be environmentally correct, but Madison Square Garden officials say the convention-goers generated record amounts of garbage--about 270 tons each day, more than the concerts and sporting events held in the arena. But David Hughes, the Garden’s vice president of operations, told Reuters that the 15,000 members of the media are responsible for much of the waste, which includes loads of leftover newspapers and piles of fast food. Cleaning up kept the Garden’s more than 60 custodians busy around-the-clock.

Still on the Mark

“Every convention is a universe in itself, with its own strange centers of gravity, its own fresh heroes and fools, its own new resolution of pressures and forces, its own irrecapturable mood of stage and place.”

--Theodore H. White, “The Making of the President, 1960.”