The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 336

LIFE STYLECOMICSTRENDS SAN DIEGO COUNTY Cos Angeles Slimes THURSDAY APRIL 5, 1990 New Bombs 'het HIGHLIGHTS Population Prop population crisis. Kxample: Don't give baby presents to families with more than two children. (The Ehrlich's have one daughter, Lisa, a 34-year-old economist who has a 15-month-old daughter.) Just as "The Population Bomb" turned Ehrlich's life upside down, the new volume is propelling the 57-year-old grandfather into a whirlwind of activity that makes even checking his telephone answering machine a rush job. Until at least Earth Day on April 22, Ehrlich says his life will be a blur of airliners, television shows and lectures, culminating with a prestigious conference at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington. He clearly has the stamina for it.

Ehrlich's most striking characteristic is a bountiful energy backstopped by hyper-alertness. He often seems to be doing two things at once, checking his electronic calendar while giving an interview, asking his secretary to schedule a phone call while he hustles a visitor out the door to lunch. All the while, he is affable, seemingly unpressured and ready to leaven serious topics with a mild joke or a dash of self-deprecation. But Ehrlich never strays far from his chosen bailiwicks of science and public policy. Since his rise to prominence, he has become a hybrid, he says.

"I'm a part-time scientist and a part-time politician. I like the science better But let's face it, one of the major human activities is politics. In terms of what we call the human predicament, the real answers lie in the political sphere trying to get people mobilized to do things differently." Clearly, "The Population Explosion," is a Please see EHRLICH, E6 FRED MERTZ Paul Ehrlich, at Stanford University rooftop greenhouse, says his new book is for people "who want to know the current situation but don't need to be persuaded." San Diego County SOCIETY: The Star of India and the Berkeley may never have left the Embarcadero, but the San Diego Maritime Museum successfully navigated local fund-raising waters by hosting its second annual gala, "Mardi Gras Magic." The recent calendar also included an appearance by dance greats Harold and Fayard Nicholas, who brought a bit of the Cotton Club to the annual gala of the San Diego Foundation for Performing Arts. El ARCHITECTURE: UC San Diego's new Molecular Biology Research Facility Unit II is the best new building on campus. It also marks the first time the Stuart Collection has pushed for an artist to get involved with a building during the design process.

El Elsewhere MAGAZINES: Tobacco firms as friends and foes the newest pictures and ideology from the environmental movement all washed down with the latest from the world of wine. E8 LEGAL VIEW: A '57 Chevy is being used in some area high schools to teach students about the law. Ell NEWSMAKERS News Note: New York Times Executive Editor Max Frankel complained after his newspaper ranked last in a survey of how many women are quoted on newspaper front naees. Frankel Frankel called the survey, released Tuesday at an editors convention in Washington, D.C., "bizarre and unworthy. As soon as Mr.

Gorbachev lets Mrs. Gorbachev do his deciding or even speaking, we will be quoting or photographing more women on Page One," Frankel said. Toon Town: Syndicated political cartoonist Pat Oliphant's acerbic drawings must have made Ronald Reagan wince more than once. Now, the Kiplinger Foundation in Washington has bought nearly 70 of those works and donated them to the unbuilt Reagan presidential library. Why did the foundation do it? Spokesman Austin Kiplinger said Reagan "is so fond of political cartoons." Special Delivery: The postal service has been misdirecting other people's mail to Ralph Nader's post office box in Washington, D.C., so he presented about 100 such letters recentlv to Nader Postmaster Gener al Anthony Frank.

The last straw was one Nader received addressed to George Bush, properly addressed to the White House. Nader told Frank he doubted "the Postal Service's ability to distinguish the most famous address in the United States from a random misdelivery." a Spaceship Earth: Former astronaut Scott Carpenter says the United States needs to embark on a new mission to planet Earth. The forests, air, streams and oceans must be preserved, he said in a talk in Hastings, Monday. Carpenter said that from space in 1962 he saw the "excruciating beauty but extreme fragility" of the planet. -Compiled by YEMI TOURE INDEX Population Bomb" made the young academic an instant prophet of bad times for all in the late 20th Century.

And thanks to appearances on "The Tonight Show" and other media exposure, Ehrlich became a celebrity scientist. For budding environmentalists, political activists and much of a generation raised on Vietnam and the atomic bomb, Ehrlich's preachments of small families and respect for the Earth were gospel. Wed UC! The new Molecular Biology Research Books: Millions already have died and the environment has been damaged due to overpopulation, says Paul Ehrlich in a new work on global living. By GARRY ABRAMS TIMES STAIT WRITER STANFORD The brink of an abyss always yawns under Paul Ehrlich's feet but it doesn't stop him from walking across the university campus to a hearty lunch. It's a little surprising, really, to encounter the famed population expert in the person of this cheerful, outgoing biology professor who praises the Stanford University faculty club's ample buffet notable for the absence of raw whole grains, undercooked vegetables and cholesterol warning signs.

Where is his hair shirt? Where is the ascetic scholar emaciated by self-denial, spiritually eroded by the follies of mankind? It's soon clear that that Ehrlich doesn't exist. And probably never did. (Another clue: The photo of a woman in a wet T-shirt taped to his office door.) Yet more than 20 years ago Ehrlich's image as a doomsayer was stamped in popular lore with publication of his book, "The Population Bomb," a polemic warning of the manifold perils of unchecked human reproduction. With its scenarios of a planet battered by food riots and doomed to nuclear war or rampant killer disease, "The ARCHITECTURE DIRKSUTRO N.Y. Artist Helps SAN DIEGO For the most part, new buildings at UC San Diego have disregarded their settings.

Until a few years ago, this was a campus of low-key wooden structures set among the eucalyptuses. Into their midst in recent years dropped such intergalactic interlopers as the Price Center and the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies con- 1 SAN DIEGO COUNTY temporary buildings that would work better in a more commercial or industrial setting. In contrast, the new Molecular Biology Research Facility Unit II, designed by architects Moore Ruble Yudell in collaboration with San Diego landscape architect Andy Spurlock and New York artist Jackie Ferrara, is one of the best buildings on campus. It proves that a contemporary structure housing cutting -edge research can cut a subtle profile. The building was funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Houston, which has a history of backing well-designed research facilities across the country.

Aside from its fine design, the building marks the first time the Stuart Collection, which oversees public art on campus, has been involved so early in the design process. Mary Beebe, the collection's director, suggested that artist Ferrara join the design team. Ferrara first met architect Charles Moore at Max Protetch Gallery in New York in the early '80s, when Moore's drawings were in one room, while Ferra-ra's art was in another. Moore and Ferrara had a meeting to test their compatibility, and, despite cultural differences, they hit it off. Unlike other new campus buildings, which fail to address the campus master plan and its key circulation routes, the new research facility was intended to be rela-Please see UCSD, E12 Here's to the Herb Krauch of Gilman Hot Springs confirms, with others, that during Prohibition distilled spirits could be obtained by prescription, "for medicinal purposes only," but throughout that noble experiment "most newspapermen drank bootleg gin." Nobody would know more about the habits of newspapermen in the Prohibition era than Krauch.

Herb is 93. He spent 50 years on the Herald-Express, starting in 1912 as an office boy at $4 a week and rising to editor. I worked as a reporter under Krauch in the early 1950s and know something about the drinking habits of reporters myself. Herb says reporters drank bootleg gin because it was easier to get than prescription booze and a lot cheaper. Since reporters probably made about $25 a week in those days, cheap was important.

"In 1930," he recalls, "we had a house of ill fame across from the Herald on Trenton Street, where one city editor occasionally spent his lunch time, and a bootleg bar at the corner of Trenton and Pico Boulevard. "If you wanted a drink at the office you could go into the photographic department and Frank Bentley, head photographer, a A 4, Now, Ehrlich is back with a sequel, "The Population Explosion" Simon Schuster co-authored with wife Anne. The new volume is an update that encompasses both the demographic changes of the last two decades and increased understanding of man's impact on the global environment, including the potential for a "greenhouse effect" on world climate. It also is sprinkled with the Ehrlichs' version of Miss Mannerssocially correct responses to the mmi tr BARBARA Facility Unit MARTIN PINHERO Los Angeles Times II on the UCSD campus. sweet; he ran the bar like a priest ministering to his flock.

It was always clogged with muggers, hookers, bag ladies, used car salesmen from nearby Figueroa Street, and, of course, reporters and photographers. George also kept the permanent stew, food being required by law. No one ever knew what went into it. We were a disreputable lot, but we kept the people informed, at least about the lower reaches of society. Stanley Walker had defined news as "wine, women and wampum," and we covered it.

I have always wanted to print a poem about that breed. I do not know its author, but it was copyrighted in 1928 by the McNaught Syndicate Inc. With apologies to its author: Here's to the gallant reporters, Those boys with the pencils and pads, Those calm, imperturbable, cool, undisturbable, Nervy, inquisitive lads. Each time that we pick up a paper Their marvelous deeds we should bless; Those bold, reprehensible, brave, indispensable Sensible lads of the press. Those lines are heavily sentimental and SOCIETY DAVID NELSON Gala Party Staged lard Star SAN DIEGO The San Diego Maritime Museum, the only museum in town that candidly admits to being partly filled with bilge, rolled red carpets down its two gangplanks March 24 to welcome about 260 supporters to its second annual, almost-seagoing gala.

Several of the city's more dedicated salts, including Gordon and Jeanne Frost and Art SAN DIEGO COUNTY and Dulcie DeFever, were among the first to board the venerable Star of India for the floating cocktail reception. The calmer types in the crowd arrived on the Embarcadero in black tie, but quite a few others bowed to the belated "Mardi Gras Magic" theme and turned out in costumes that, in the true New Orleans style, owed their inspirations mostly to nonsense and whimsy. A woman in a comically conical, Guinevere-style headdress, Groucho Marx glasses and a green nose rather exemplified the jovial silliness that was at the core of this event. Chairman Kay Black, who greeted guests at the head of the gangplank, followed her own sartorial advice and donned, among other things, a metallic fright wig that made some vague reference to Cleopatra and probably would have sent that lady in search of an asp. "You might think this is 'Mardi Gras but it's really 'Katherine's Black said, referring to herself and giggling as she watched the costumed guests parade around the Star's main deck.

Clowns handed out balloons twisted into silly shapes, and the crowd, inclined to Please see SOCIETY, ES ironic, but they were probably written by one of those bold, reprehensible, brave, indispensable, sensible lads of the press himself. Of course, there were lassies as well as lads, but not many. The women were often called sob sisters and were usually given tear jerkers to write stories about young mothers who were in jail for sticking their boyfriends with an ice pick. But they were good reporters tough, aggressive, resourceful, subtle and fearless. Agness Underwood, as a reporter, once dropped a white carnation on the body of a waitress who had been stabbed to death in a bar, just to give the story a name "The White Carnation Murder." Then she told her photographer to take a picture of her creation.

A policeman interfered. Agness slapped him with her purse. As a city editor, Agness expected her reporters to be no less aggressive. The press has now become the media, and its practitioners wear stylish clothes and drink fastidiously. City editors are rarely carried out in delirium tremens.

Reporters are responsible family men and women and have degrees. Or so I hear. Sensible Lads (and Lassies) of the Press JACK SMITH would sell you a shot of gin for 10 cents. In 1928 the city editor was drinking two fifths day and eventually, in delirium tremens, was carried out of the office on a stretcher. Those were the days." One wonders whether the quality of the paper was affected by the city editor's going into delirium tremens.

We all worked in a sort of constant delirium. When I worked at the Herald in the early 1950s our city editor was Agness Underwood, a tough, sentimental, competent newspaperwoman who had been a holy terror on the street as a reporter. As city editor Agness rarely drank, but sometimes she would pass out beer to her boys, as a reward for honest labor, from a case that had been delivered from the Continental Bar at Pico and Georgia Street by George Banker, the one-eyed bartender. The Continental was the longest bar in town. George was gruff and burly, with an intimidating eyeless socket.

But he was Abby E3 Ann Landers E15 Art Buchwald E2 Astrology E13 Bridge E14 Comics E13, EH, E15 Dr. Joyce Brothers E14 Erma Bombeck E5 Miss Manners E9 Neil Solomon E15.