Trapped

EVERYBODY IN LA JOLLA knew the Brodericks. Daniel T. Broderick III and his wife, Betty, seemed to have a classic society-page marriage. Dan was a celebrity in local legal circles. Armed with degrees from both Harvard Law School and Cornell School of Medicine, the prominent malpractice attorney was aggressive, persuasive and cunning--a $1-million-a-year lawyer at the top of his game.

It sounds like a folk remedy, but a West Virginia University entomologist says it works: Use natural oils--spearmint, wintergreen, peppermint--to ward off mites preying on wild honeybees. The proof, James Amrine says, can be seen in 46 nearby honeybee colonies where applications of wintergreen have produced the healthiest honeybees in years. "There is no doubt those bees are almost back to where they were before these mites came into this country," he said.

The prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is again in the news. The two Americans released this month by Iran have reported that when they complained about conditions in their Tehran prison, the jailers would "immediately remind us of comparable conditions at Guantanamo Bay. " Such is the power of symbols. Symbols are important, and we ignore them at our peril. But even in these hyperpartisan times, when symbols are baseball bats used by thugs in the public square to beat reason senseless, I like to pretend that the truth is worth pursuing.

Portland Mason Schuyler, the precocious and highly publicized child actress daughter of the late actors James and Pamela Mason, has died at age 55. Also a scriptwriter like her late mother, Schuyler died May 10 in Beverly Hills after a long, unspecified illness. From her birth Nov. 26, 1948, through her famous parents' bitter courtroom divorce squabbles in 1964, Schuyler was widely photographed along with them.

First of three parts Tiffany Lee wanted a car. She was weary of the two-hour bus ride to her job at a UCLA Health System clinic. She hated having to ask friends to drive her 7-year-old son to his asthma treatments. But as a single mother with three children, bad credit and a $27,000-a-year salary, she couldn't find a bank or dealership willing to give her a loan. Then a friend steered her to Repossess Auto Sales in Hawthorne. Another buyer might have balked at the deal she was offered.

Laughing as they killed, two youths clad in dark ski masks and long black coats fired handguns at will and blithely tossed pipe bombs into a crowd of their terrified classmates Tuesday inside a suburban high school southwest of Denver, littering halls with as many as 23 bodies and wounding at least 25 others.

The girls from the drama academy cost the most. Actresses are pretty, after all, and pretty is the point. Steady access to their sexual favors could cost a man more than $25,000 a year, not to mention the perks and gifts they would expect. The gentleman on a budget had better browse through students at the tourism institute, or perhaps the business school. Women there can be had for as low as $5,000 a year. Those are the prices advertised by the young man who calls himself "Student Ding," a senior at Shanghai University who, in the grand tradition of Chinese entrepreneurship, is earning his money by working as a pimp.

He was so good at talking to people on TV that "The Simpsons" gently mocked his folksy, aw-shucks demeanor. But now it looks as if Huell Howser intends to fade away without comment. Howser, the white-maned public TV host with the Southern accent who's famed for blurting out "That's amazing!" during interviews, has retired from making original episodes of his program "California's Gold," which travels around the state tracking down interesting people and places. The shows air on numerous statewide public TV stations, including KCET-TV Channel 28. Speculation that the 67-year-old Howser is seriously ill has been circulating among local TV industry veterans in recent weeks, and insiders reported that he has not been seen for months at his Los Angeles office.

Whenever Samuel Benitez, who now lives in Portland, Ore., even thinks about his old job as a Los Angeles policeman, he says he starts coughing. And the closer he gets to Los Angeles, the worse the hacking gets. Benitez, 35, claims that the cough is caused by stress from working for the Los Angeles Police Department. Complaining that the cough disabled him, he recently won a lifetime tax-free disability pension of $1,480 a month, plus $51,390 in back benefits.

All across America, a panic is spreading. But you won't hear the terrified multitudes and their pleas for help, their expletives shouted at the sky. Why? Because these suffering people are mostly fiction writers. And fiction writers almost always suffer alone. The application deadline  for the fiction-writing grants from the National Endowment for the Arts is just hours away. (To be precise, the deadline is 11:59 p.m. EST, or 8:59 p.m. PST.) Fill out a few forms, submit a sample of your work, and you have a shot at winning $25,000 to write your next book.