<i> Snapshots of life in the Golden State.</i> : City Brass Hopes Piped-In Classics Drive Out Loiterers

Mozart’s melodies increased milk yield among dairy cows. The U.S. military used rock music--”You’re No Good” and “I Fought the Law and the Law Won” were favorites--to force Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega to his knees.

In Santa Rosa, city fathers, mothers and merchants have begun piping the classics into the downtown plaza, hoping to drum out the loiterers and panhandlers, many of them young people who “seem to be just undaunted by any type of authority,” says the mayor, Sharon Wright.

Results so far have not been exactly fortissimo. Cristi McElhenie, 21, professes to find it “peaceful,” and as for its intent: “I think we have the right to be here. If people don’t want to be asked for money, that’s too bad.”

The critique from nose-ringed Stephen Garver was that “they play the cheesy classics. They should play more Mozart.”

Failing the classics, it’s time to bring in the major artillery: polka.

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A Good Year for Flying

Last winter was a good one for migrating birds that spend the cold months in California. About 2.7 million more ducks, geese, swans and coots were sighted along the Pacific Flyway than in 1993. The recovery is due in part to the Western drought ending and increases in wetland habitat, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says.

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1996 1995 1994 1993 Ducks 5,203,640 4,030,003 4,409,697 3,072,770 Geese 1,070,678 948,715 1,157,281 853,548 Swans 107,568 55,379 83,201 65,783 Coots 553,482 563,758 435,789 253,807 TOTALS 6,935,368 5,597,855 6,085,968 4,245,908

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Source: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Pacific Flyway mid-winter surveys

Researched by NONA YATES / Los Angeles Times

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Klaas updates: No courtroom TV in the Polly Klaas murder case? No problem.

The family of the 12-year-old Petaluma girl whose 1993 kidnapping and murder became a matter of nationwide concern has set up a Web site with illustrations by a courtroom artist and a daily diary written by Polly’s father, Marc, or her grandfather Joe Klaas.

The Internet diary entries do not pretend to be unbiased. “Turnstile Justice,” the title of Day 2’s account, complained that “we must continue to waste time and money to defend the indefensible . . . the rights of a monster who did not consider the rights of his victim for 10 seconds.”

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Puff the magic drawing: In the acid-pen tradition of 19th century political cartoonist Thomas Nast, a San Leandro fifth-grader has fearlessly taken on two matters that few elected officials would dare--the volcanic turf of the O.J. Simpson trial, and smoking.

Eleven-year-old Stephen Torres won a national cartoon contest with his anti-smoking illustration of a smirking Joe Camel being defended in court by Simpson attorney Robert Shapiro. “Your Honor,” Shapiro is saying, “my client has killed nobody.”

Stephen’s cartoon is on the front page of the mid-April issue of NewsCurrents, which sponsored the editorial cartoon contest. Nothing subliminal about his message, Stephen says. “I don’t like it when people smoke.”

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Of human kindness: This is the kind of story that gives California its reputation as . . . California. First there was a police alert warning Eureka mothers to be on the lookout for some woman in Spandex and wraparound sunglasses grabbing other women’s babies and breast-feeding them, with the remark, “Every child needs lactate nourishment.”

Now one mother says the strange woman merely lifted up the baby, then exposed her breasts and made some remark like, “See, I’m breast-feeding too,” and squeezed a few drops of milk.

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One offs: To mellow out its inmates, Alameda County has pulled the plug on violent TV in the county jail and now airs only five channels: PBS, TNT and the Discovery, Learning, and Arts & Entertainment channels. . . . UC Davis has set up a $2 hotline, 1-900-225-BUGS, so residents of the 916 and 707 area codes can ask the entomologist what kind of bug or spider they’ve run across.

EXIT LINE

“I was trying to do a good thing and all I got was kicked in the ribs.”

--Pauline Lucido of Pittsburg, a widow who took pity on a penniless couple and gave them a home, after which police say they spent the next two years keeping Lucido a virtual prisoner, pawning her possessions and persuading her to refinance her house and give them the proceeds. Quoted in the Contra Costa Times.

California Dateline appears every other Friday.