<i> Snapshots of life in the Golden State.</i> : A Biological Grinch Trims the Christmas Tree Crop

Remember the phrase pitch canker disease; this time next year, it may be as familiar as deck the halls.

Christmas tree farms in California are reeling from an advancing fungus which in Southern California has already wiped out up to 40% of the crop, especially among such conifer species as Monterey pine and Douglas fir--big Christmas sellers.

From the first ooze of resin at the base, it is only a matter of weeks before pitch canker spreads to the branches, bringing wilting and death.

“We’re trying to inform our members they should cut out diseased trees and stop the spread by either burying them or burning them,” said Mike Wade, executive director of the 300-member California Christmas Tree Growers group.

In Rio Dell, a town near California’s timber coast, the official Christmas tree didn’t last long enough to fall ill. Star, lights, extension cord and tree vanished from outside City Hall less than a week before Christmas, in spite of precautions that included steel rods to protect the tree from “hackers.” With splendid Yuletide contradiction, city worker James Hale declared, “Somebody needs to be made an example of. This is Christmas.”

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Poinsettia Time

Americans bought more than 56 million pots of poinsettias last year, and California produced more than any other state. Most sell in the six weeks before Christmas. Red is still by far the most popular color, but in the last five years, pink, white and other colors have risen in popularity. In Southern California last year, pink outsold white for the first time.

STATE POTS SOLD IN 1993 (in millions) 1. California 7.7 2. North Carolina 4.3 3. Ohio 4.2 4. Texas 3.7 5. Pennsylvania 3.3 6. Michigan 3.1 7. New York 2.9 8. Florida 2.7 9. New Jersey 2.1 10. Illinois 1.7

Sources: California Agricultural Statistics Service; Paul Ecke Ranch, Encinitas

Researched by TRACY THOMAS/Los Angeles Times

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Hello, you’re on the Arianna: The name hasn’t been nailed down yet--”Beat the Press,” maybe, or “Do Not Face the Nation”--but the other Huffington could be returning to the airwaves very soon.

Arianna Huffington has been taping a pilot for a new television program to be shopped around imminently, a satirical program taking on the news media. Its first guest . . . Newt Gingrich.

Mrs. Huffington has already done another cable show this year, “Critical Mass,” and is at work on a journal-style book on the U.S. Senate campaign her husband lost. U.S. News and World Report says the show will examine what the creators call the liberal bias of the press, but Mrs. Huffington’s people say she would like the program to be bipartisan.

After the Nov. 8 election, Mrs. Huffington told Larry King that if she had been running the campaign, “I would have been 20 points ahead.” Let’s see whether that holds for Nielsen ratings, too.

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Here’s your (backward baseball) hat, what’s your hurry?

Call it the United Away Fund.

Jesse Richardson, native Californian, wants to move back here from Boise, Ida. Loves the place . . . the people are another matter. Even after two years, he feels unwelcome, taunted for his Califorbears, insulted when he and his fiancee went roller-blading downtown.

So he’s giving Idahoans the opportunity some had wanted all along: to get rid of him. His ad in the Idaho Statesman read: “Native Californian needs to move home. Needs help defraying moving costs. All donations welcome.” Within three days, he got $75. He needs only another $1,425, and he’ll be out of there like a hot famous potato.

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Gorilla in the midst: More cutting controversy over Koko the gorilla. A Woodside man wants to fell some firs and redwoods and build a house on the 23 acres he owns next to the Gorilla Foundation, home to Koko, the signing gorilla.

Officials have already said no to one logging plan after the foundation argued that it would disturb Koko, the most accomplished ape since King Kong, just as they try to breed her to find out whether she can pass on her language skills to offspring--difficult words like “chain saw.”

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Drawn, then quartered: Salvatore Bono soon takes his place in the odd-name Congress. Bono shares the same party with Newt, but not nearly the same exalted quarters. The new Republican congressman (“Sonny” to those of us who still believe music comes on albums) lost the freshman drawing and wound up in office Siberia, the fifth floor of the Cannon Building, the attic of the Capitol, where even elevators hardly go.

He took it like a Southern California fitness stoic: “I don’t care. Whatever. If I have to walk a flight of stairs, that doesn’t bother me. I’ll get some exercise.”

And, revenge being a dish best eaten cold, the veteran and vocal GOP Congressman Robert K. Dornan’s new quarters were lately the personal offices of ex-Speaker Thomas Foley, thus passing the outgoing on to the outrageous.

EXIT LINE

“People come up from L.A., do their robbing and killing and whatever, and then they’re gone.”

--Bakersfield Winchell’s clerk and aspiring screenwriter Charlie Seigler, speaking about holiday crime. Quoted in the Bakersfield Californian.

California Dateline appears every other Friday.