Daily News from New York, New York • 649

PEOPL DAVE fS BARRY'S WORLD 3JK I JFK's new squeeze a well-dressed success anSy Hissing aduesif ore could've cost arm or leg DF YOU LOOK at any list of great modern writers, such as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald, you'll notice two things about them: 1. They all had editors. arolyne Bessette, who has just emerged as John F. Kennedy latest love interest, may be a new face for the general public, but she's well-known in the fashion world.

Bessette, who hails from Connecticut, is director of public relations for Calvin Klein Collections. She is an attractive blond in her late 20s, currently a resident of the East Village and a regular at two oh-so-trendy hang outs: Cafe Tabac and Odeon. Bessette i 2. They are all dead. Thus we can draw the scientific conclusion that editors are fatal.

I was made intensely aware of this recently when, as the direct result of an idea conceived of by my editor, I wound up flailing around up to my armpits in the Swamp of Doom. Charlotte's Web CHARLOTTE HAYS "This is a poisonwood tree. You don't want to touch it. "I'm not touching anything," I said Then we began our hike. At first it was fine.

There was an actual path, with little signs to identify the plants. But suddenly John, having apparently brushed up against a lunatic-wood tree, plunged RIGHT INTO THE SWAMP. Soon we were up to our knees in murky festering soup, walking on one of those squishy muck bottoms, sur rounded by dense growth and the smell of rotting vegetation. Deeper and deeper we went. I was fighting my way through big snarls of vines, stumbling over logs, falling into hidden holes, while up runs with a tashion crowd tnat includes designer Gordon Henderson.

"She's about the nicest woman you'd ever meet, totally charming and articulate," says a source. She is described as "fun and bubbly." Still, a friend adds that Bessette is a strong-willed woman, unafraid to express contrary opinions and "not a mannequin." And if Jackie Onassis was sometimes dismayed by Daryl Hannah's grooming habits, she may find the well-turned-out Carolyne more to her liking. "She probably looks better than anybody on Earth in Calvin's clothes," the source asserts. The Tree Lovers One way the rich are different from you and me is that they don't have to wait for their trees to grow. According to the Litchfield Times, the new trend is buying huge trees, roots and all, and transporting them by a convoy, often comprising as many as five flatbed trucks, to Litchfield County.

"The idea that you can buy nature is repulsive, but my eyes will fail in 20 years, so we're doing it," said Jane Hammerstein, who is married to William Hammerstein, a son of Oscar. The Hammersteins' purchases include a 165-year old apple tree and some stately spruces. Among the other tree lovers of Litchfield County are New York investor Peter May, who reportedly has purchased an entire Long Island nursery of 100-year-old trees for his Bridgewater house, Robert Mnuchin, owner of Washington's Mayflower Inn, Michael Wiener, owner of Infinity Broadcasting Company, and retired realtor and art dealer Ben Heller. All In the Family Okay, so there's this older brother who's a writer, but he's not famous like his younger brother, who has written hit play after hit play about his older brother. Well, now older brother Danny Simon who was the model for, among other famous Neil Simon characters, Felix in "The Odd Couple" is trying to emulate his younger brother.

He ahead, John, oblivious to the aura of has written a play and wants to get it performed in N.Y. Just a few days before Neil's "Laughter on the 23rd Floor" opened, Danny gave a reading of "The Convertible Girl," about a Latino lady who falls for a Jewish guy and is willing to convert, at the National Arts Club. We hear it was hilarious. FYI: Danny's looking for backers. Speaking of people with famous relatives, the 27-year-old son of John Weitz, Paul Weitz, has a new play, "All for One," scheduled to open tonight at the Ensemble Studio Theatre.

It's about three young men who went to high school together and are reunited in Los Angeles, where one is on the verge of becoming a star. The play deals with the pressures of success, selling out, and people's "ultimate agendas." The Lit Set If you're pining to read fashionable fashion writer Michael Gross, who's on a three-month leave of absence from New York magazine to write a book, relief is here but you'll have to buy a Brit magazine. Gross is writing a New York Diary column for the Tatler. Also of interest to literary New Yorkers, agent Ed Victor, who divides his time between our fair city and London, will be doing a column on publishing for the magazine. Is Nothing Sacred? The old Studio 54 site is on the verge of becoming a strip joint.

New York magazine's Intelligencer column will report tomorrow that a Stringfel-lows is about to set up there. Ian Schrager, erstwhile owner of Studio, tells the mag that Stringfellows is "exploitive of women" and bad for the neighborhood. Gosh, and Studio was so wholesome. menace all around us, was delivering a cheerful nonstop commentary on the flora and fauna, pointing out rare mushrooms, tree snails, etc. I wanted to scream: "TREE SNAILS? "There could be GIANT SNAKES hiding in this water, and you're looking at TREE SNAILS?" But I did not want to act like a weenie.

I saved that until the water started getting deeper, and deeper, until finally we were up to our armpits, our feet sinking in goo, and John, pointing right in front of us, said, "This is an alligator hole." "You mean there's a (bad word) ALLIGATOR in there?" I asked. "Yes," said John, "and it's appropriate that you should use that word to describe him, because this is mating season." "WE DON'T WANT YOUR WOM That is not its technical name. Its technical name is the Big Cypress National Preserve, which is part of the Everglades ecosystem, an enormous, wet, nature-intensive area that at one time was considered useless, but which is now recognized as a vital ecological resource, providing Florida with an estimated 93 of its bloodsucking insects. No, really, the Everglades are very important. Tragically, they have been tampered with by man, an ecological moron who is always blundering into sensitive areas and befouling them with beer cans, golf courses, etc.

Only lately has man realized that the best thing for him to do is stay out of the Everglades. This was certainly MY policy. For years the only contact I had with the Everglades was when I drove across them on Highway 41 at a speed of 87 miles per hour, which I figured was fast enough to outrun any wildlife that might prey on motorists. Even then I occasionally had Nature Encounters, such as the time my car encountered a flying green bug large enough to have a Business Class section, which produced a windshield splat easily the size of U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich.

So it never occurred to me to set actual foot in the Everglades until my editor, Tom Shroder, suggested that I go hiking with him out there. "It's real interesting," he said, never once mentioning alligators, let alone poison trees. So one Saturday morning we went. On the edge of the Everglades we stopped for supplies at a combination truck stopsporting-goods store. I bought the survival basics: a safari-style helmet, a machete, beef jerky, a bottle of Evian water, a snakebite kit and Certs.

Here is an actual quotation from the snake-bite kit instructions: "Misuse of the lymph constrictor could cause gangrene which might even necessitate amputation." And this does not refer to the snake. I used the machete to cut the tag off the safari-style helmet, so the wildlife creatures would not think I was some easily edible swamp rookie. But I was still nervous. And I did not feel better when we met our guide, John Kalafarski, a Park Service ableMmatlf bn -anoamof of a tree that looked, to mo( oxaotly like every other tree in the Everglades. in NEW YORK 3 a EN!" I shouted at the hole.

"That might offend him," Tom pointed out. "NOT THAT WE DON'T FIND YOUR WOMEN ATTRACTIVE!" I shouted at the hole. Fortunately we got out of there without having any important limbs chomped off. Although the Certs were nniHEN WE GOT BACK onto the I dry trail, I opened the beef-jer-UUky package with my machete and passed it around, and we enjoyed a pleasant sense of fellowship and accomplishment and wondered if we would need oral surgery to repair the ierkv-rfMatPriVIamaee to' ourteeth. If looks of things, with the judge claiming to have been stabbed in prison, they may have some rewriting to do.

THEY LOVE LIAM Uam Neeson and his present lady love, Natasha Richardson, dropped into Joe Allen's the other eve (it was there they'd rendezvous almost nightly after end-ing performances in "Anna Christie" where they first got together). They'd just been to a preview of Neeson's newest -film, Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's and others, also at the preview, were of praise over hfe performaWcTa $ihefutriaristwarl BY PAT O'HAIRE THAT TV SHOW "LAW AND ORDER," which takes a lot of its scripts right from the headlines, is readying an episode right now on the troubled times Of former Judge Sol Wachtler and his obsession with a former lady love, Joy Silverman. jJiececaJled "Censure hasa't to CM yqu mWrMm. PsrroV.tfy'HmftM ingnere in mic Kvorgladooi I'll wavo to you from-tha- .2 car..