TEA FOR TET: For the first time...

TEA FOR TET: For the first time in its 16 years, the Tet festival in Westminster next month will be alcohol-free. The Vietnamese Community of Orange County, a nonprofit group, urged the liquor ban, citing a recent survey showing that drinking and driving was a major concern within the Vietnamese community. . . . Says Quat Tran, one of its directors: “Usually we associate [Tet] with some kind of alcohol. A lot of young people will attend the festival, and if we made it clear that this is alcohol-free, it will be a very good first step.” . . . The Garden Grove Tet festival will be alcohol-free too, as it was last year.

COLLEGE TET: A third Tet festival is in the works in Santa Ana. Rancho Santiago College will hold a Tet festival Feb. 17-18 during a conference on campus of the Vietnamese Students Associations of Southern California. . . . One organizer, John Vu, says the students are pleased because the faculty and staff at Rancho “care about Vietnamese students very much. The students feel they are welcome there.”

NO THANKS, NEWT: The local Legal Aid Society office in Santa Ana was just one of many agencies on the Republicans’ hit list in Congress last year. So its director, Robert J. Cohen, had to chuckle when a GOP fund-raiser called to seek Cohen’s financial support “as a business leader” in promoting the conservative agenda. . . . For a $250 contribution, he could get a copy of House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s gavel, an offer Cohen joked was akin to “tipping the executioner.”

TRADING POETS: The Java Garden on Beach Boulevard in Huntington Beach is bringing in poets you can’t usually get--unless you drive to San Diego. Inviting nine San Diego poets to read their works tonight was the idea of local poetry organizer Victor Infante. He’s calling it “Tearing the Curtain III.” The trade-off: Orange County poets will read in San Diego later in the month. . . . Says Rancho Santiago College poetry professor Lee Mallory: “Leave it to Victor to come up with such a great idea.”