SCHOOL DUEL: It wasn’t just for cake...

SCHOOL DUEL: It wasn’t just for cake and coffee that hundreds of parents turned out for Back to School night at Grant High School in Van Nuys. Worried parents, some of them immigrants, questioned administrators about ethnic violence that left two Armenian boys stabbed and a Latino boy shot following a melee in a school parking lot. . . . Principal Eve Sherman emphasized that the violence happened off campus (B1).

LOSING TIMES: Gloom gripped the Cal State Northridge athletic department as coaches and players mourned defeat in a campus election over whether to increase student fees to provide more money for sports (C10). . . . Said Dan Lazarovits, a freshman football player: “Morale’s low.” Pitcher Keven Kempton called the vote an embarrassment, saying, “I don’t play ball just for myself; I play for the school.”

TRADE ZONE: To help West Valley manufacturers recover from the quake, Rep. Howard (Buck) McKeon proposes forming a trade zone to exempt them from customs and excise taxes on exports (B4). . . . McKeon made the announcement at Duke’s Inc., a Chatsworth manufacturer of aircraft parts, which had $1.2 million in quake damage. . . . McKeon’s election rival liked the idea too . . . saying it was too good for McKeon to have suggested it.

FUN PLACE: Devoted keepers at the Los Angeles Zoo, working with a bare-bones budget from the city and a lot of imagination, find innovative ways to enrich the animals’ environment (Valley Life! Page 10). . . . Thaya du Bois, the zoo’s assistant director of research, gives them things to play with, forage for or otherwise keep busy.

HOMECOMING: Thomas Wolfe was wrong . . . at least when it comes to the Glendale Symphony. After 29 years away, the symphony returns to town Saturday night for a season at the Alex Theatre. . . . The orchestra remained away for a simple reason: space. “There was no venue here to hold the orchestra as it grew,” said Noel R. Veden, president of the Glendale Symphony Orchestra Assn. See Valley Life! Page 3.

HONORED COWBOY: What can you give a man who has a baseball team and his own museum? Not much, but American Movie Classics is going to make an attempt. At 10:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. Sunday, the cable channel will air a 60-minute tribute--”Gene Autry: Melody of the West.” . . . Valley fans, of course, can see more of the singing cowboy at the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum at Griffith Park.