The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 87

LIFE STYLECOMICSTRENDS itiON VIEW THURSDAY 000 Glimta AUGUST 30, 1990 HIGHLIGHTS Experts Called to Active Duty During Crisis Mideast conflict: Authorities on the Gulf region are in demand as the global media scramble for information and instant analysis of events. By GARRY ABRAMS TIMES STAFF WRITER Since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait early this month, Tahscen Basheer hasn't needed an alarm clock. The longtime, well-connected spokesman for the Egyptian perspective in Middle Eastern affairs has gotten plenty of wake-up calls from the global media, eager for his insights into the latest developments In the Persian Gulf crisis. "At 5 a.m., the Japanese and Australian networks start calling," he explained. 1 mmmhq mUi i 1 NAGGING CONSCIENCE: Si Frumkin has spent decades speaking out on behalf of Soviet Jews, alienating much of the Jewish Establishment in the process.

Now, his efforts have become a mainstream cause. El GULF PROS: The Mideast crisis has created an apparently insatiable appetite for information about the region. Experts find themselves fielding endless questions from the global media. El ROUGH FINISH: A retired plasterer's self-published collection of down-home tales, "me 'n Henry," has gained quite a following, despite its lousy spelling and grammar, and distinct lack of literary style. El BOOK REVIEW: "A Good Baby" by Leon Rookc is a fable of primal good versus primal evil set in a backwoods kingdom.

Rooke's "verbal fireworks," writes reviewer Richard Eder, make it an entrancing kingdom indeed. Ell WEEKEND The Moon Festival in Chinatown on Sunday will feature storytelling, poetry reading and craft demonstrations. E6 The Basque Club's 23rd annual picnic Sunday is at Chl-no's Junior Fairgrounds. E7 54 Hours. E6 5 a.m., the "In the (later) morning and afternoon, it's the Egyptian and European press.

Then In the evenings, I do American TV." Although his may be an extreme case, Bash-ccr's demanding interview schedule illustrates the frantic pace that many Middle Eastern experts have experienced since Iraqi soldiers and tanks crossed into Kuwait Aug. 2. The crisis has created an apparently insatiable appetite for their expertise, these specialists say, noting that this media hunger for instant analysis probably Is unprecedented both in volume and duration. Furthermore, some specialists say the complex crisis has forced them to scramble for information too, tapping pipelines to government sources, meeting with associates, and keeping up with colleagues by reading their comments in newspapers and catching what they have NEWSMAKERS Japanese and Australian networks start calling. In the later morning and afternoon, it's the Egyptian and European press.

Then in the evenings, I do American Tahseen Basheer expert on Egyptian perspective In Middle East Tumor Removed: Former first lady Nancy Reagan Wednesday had a small cancerous tumor removed, just beneath her left nostril, a family spokesman said at St. Marys Hos- nltnl In Rnpnoatnr SI Frumkin burns Soviet flag at a rally In front of the Federal Building in Westwood during Passover, 1970. The Obsession For years, Si Frumkin irked the Jewish Establishment with his crusade to aid Soviet Jews. Now his cause is in the mainstream. to say on television.

A few also say the crisis is a chance to gain prestige, widespread attention and, just maybe, exert some influence on the course of events. For Basheer a confidant of Egypt's leaders for decades, a press spokesman for assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, ambassador to Canada, a representative to many Arab state conferences and now an ambassador at large the nonstop commenting had become a little too Please see MIDEAST, E4 Reagan Minn. In 1987, doctors at Bethesda Naval Hospital removed her left breast and adjoining lymph glands after a cancerous tumor was found. She is otherwise in excellent health, the spokesman said. No Go: Mothers Against Drunk Driving will not be allowed to parade images of death at a wine festival In Kalamazoo, Mich.

MADD's display was to have featured headstones for the Sept. 8 parade. The float was turned down because its theme wasn't consistent with the rest of the parade, said event chairman Brian Caplan. Michael Hughes, president of the local MADD chapter, wasn't worried about drinking at the event: "I'm worried about when they get behind the wheel." like what we do." Yet, here he was at a parlor meeting for Operation Exodus, the massive fund-raising campaign to evacuate the Jews from the Soviet Union and help them settle in Israel. Parlor meetings and fund raising are not his style.

He is more comfortable in front of a street demonstration with a bullhorn or at an office machine churning out copies of "his latest" for every member of Congress. Over the decades he has moved radically from the left to the right, partly because of his single-mind-edncss about his cause. But he has kept his objective and has seen his issue become By KATHLEEN IIENDRIX TIMES STAFF WRITER Head down, Si Frumkin stood quietly as he was introduced to the group of about 35 affluent mainstream Jews. Although he was, for decades, one of the most relentless and troublesome voices speaking out on behalf of Soviet Jews, few in the room had heard of him. Frumkin mock-winced in embarrassment as the introduction was ended: "Since he retired in 1987, he has been devoting his full life to Right Rub: Pia Zadora had a stiff neck when she went to WNBC-TV in New York for an interview recently, so her began rubbing it.

Sen. Al D'Amato also happened to be in the studio Utterly Unrefined Short Stories Win a Big Following Books: Retired plasterer publishes and markets his own collection of down-home tales, complete with lousy grammar. By LEO W. BANKS SPECIAL TO THE TIMES Retired plasterer Walter Swan doesn't fit the image of a hot author. He wears denim coveralls and a black cowboy hat.

At 15, he dropped out of the eighth grade after spending so much time there he had carved his initials in almost every desk in the school. By his own admission he can't write or spell. In his Bisbce, bookstore, he proudly displays one of his report cards from 1932 straight Fs in spelling and straight Ds in English. "I don't know nothln' about writing," says the gregarious 73-year-old. "I don't even know what adjectives and vowels and things like that are.

But I know plastering. I could plaster your house up one side and down the other." But his book, "me 'n Henry," a collection of down-homo stories about Swan and his brother, Henry, growing up in Please see BOOKS, E14 Zadora doing good deeds. Uncharacteristically formal in a tic and tweed jacket, Frumkin greeted them with his characteristic ironic humor, which often stops just short of sarcasm. Congratulations, he told the group, for having such smart parents and grandparents. They "got out." Otherwise they would not be sitting in a living room in Beverly Hills, but in Minsk or Kiev, waiting for Operation Exodus to get them out now.

It was an unusual setting for Frumkin, now 60, a man whose battle for Soviet Jews has often set him outside of, or at odds with, local Jewish leadership. He has said of himself and the Southern California Council for Soviet Jews that he founded in 1968: "Frankly the Jewish Establishment doesn't mainstream. Frumkin, a Holocaust survivor, alluded only briefly to "the camps," concentrating instead on what happened to the survivors after liberation. "The world didn't give a damn. We were an embarrassment.

The world didn't know to do with us. It would have been better if we had died." His rage was all the more forceful for its containment, It lent authority and urgency to his remarks, his point being, "Now there is a place for Jews to go Israel." In the late '60s a message from Soviet Jews began reaching the West, "Why have you forgotten us?" he said. "We remember now. After decades of fighting for their, right to emigrate), now we're get-Please aee FRUMKIN, E10 I am idealistic. I guess I'm looking for fairness and said: "Here, let me try that," according to the New York Daily News.

Said Zadora: "He managed to get rid of the cricks in my neck without so much as breaking his chain of thought." Doing Better: Dr. Thomas E. Starzl, who performed the world's first successful liver transplant in 1967, was released from Pittsburgh's Presbyterian University Hospital Tuesday, four days after undergoing a coronary artery bypass. Starzl, 64, has performed hundreds of transplant operations at the same hospital. -Compiled by YEMI TOURE in an unfair SI.

Frumkin War Technology Aside, What About the Human Factor? JACK SMITH And I remember seeing the first B-29 land. For that we paid 7,000 dead Marines. My battalion approached Iwo on an LST (landing ship-tank). The weather was bad. Being overcrowded, many of us had to sleep topside, in our bags.

When the gale came, we were doused. But one of us, a man named Blake, had Ingenuity and foresight. He had rigged up a tent, using blankets and sticks, and came out dry the next day. "I build my house of bricks," he said, smiling slyly. Blake wanted to be a chemical engineer.

I think he would have been a good one. He was blown away on D-day. I was scheduled to land in the third wave, at 0910. We landed at 0910, exactly. One of the men in my boat looked up at an airplane and his helmet fell off into the ocean.

A Navy patrol boat came alongside and a swabble (Marine Please see JACK SMITH, El By the time you read this, it will probably be out of date. I want to say something about the crisis in the Middle East; but of course it changes every hour, and events quickly overtake predictions. I believe I have read every word printed in The Times about it, including the pontifications of Henry Kissinger. I envy our reporters who are on the scene in Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. I notice, though, that reporters often quote Pentagon or Administration sources who ask to remain anonymous.

Also, our commitment to the Middle East is most often expressed in terms of technology. The other day, for example, a Pago 1 story reviewed our military situation in Saudi Arabia. It said that our forces there "include the 7th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, equipped with tanks, heavy artillery and Cobra attack helicopters, and attack-oriented naval forces aboard INDEX Abhy E5 Ann Landers E13 Art Duchwald E4 Astrology Ell Bridge E12 Camp Fund Ell Comics E11.E12.E13 Joyce Brothers E12 Krma Bombeck EH Miss Manners E9 Neil Solomon E13 aircraft carriers armed with A-6 attack bombers, F-18s and EA-6 attack bombers, and EA-6B radar jamming planes. Well, that sounds great. If it comes down to a military confrontation, our technology should prevail.

But so far I haven't read much about the human factor, War Is fought, in the end, by people. My only experience with it was the battle of Iwo Jima, but I still remember it in human terms, We were told that the reason for attacking Iwo was to secure it as an emergency landing field for B-29 bombers returning from their devastating raids on Tokyo..