Son, 65, Finds You Can Go Home

Lola Moseley, 87, and her son, Donald, 65, have a lot of catching up to do. It was 26 years ago that Donald left his home in Charlotte, N.C., for the streets of Washington, D.C., and dropped out of sight. Mother and son were reunited Saturday. “It’s wonderful. It’s practically indescribable,” Donald said. “It’s very emotional. We’re all loving and hugging each other, and we have so much to talk about and catch up with over the years we weren’t in contact with each other.” Lola, meanwhile, was getting reacquainted with her bearded son. “He looks a little different after 26 years, but I’m going to get used to him looking the way he is,” she said. Donald, a former Navy fighter pilot, said he became a street person after his wife divorced him and he started drinking. His family found him after seeing his picture in a newspaper article on the homeless and contacting social services people in the nation’s capital. “I intend to be here for a long time,” he said.

--As with all residents of Indiana, Republican Sen. Dan Quayle, by definition, is a Hoosier. A very proud one. But that is exactly what has Quayle’s dander up these days. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary defines “Hoosier” as “an awkward, unhandy or unskilled person, especially an ignorant rustic.” And, as a verb, the dictionary says, the word means “to loaf on or botch a job.” Tough stuff to a proud Hoosier. Quayle dispatched a letter to William A. Llewellyn, president of Merriam-Webster Inc., publisher of the dictionary, calling on him to revise the definition. “Nowhere in my great state will you find someone who considers a Hoosier an awkward, unhandy, unskilled or ignorant rustic,” Quayle wrote. He has even offered his own definition: “Someone who is quick, smart, resourceful, skillful, a winner, unique and brilliant.”

--In Nenana, Alaska, the big attraction these days is the thawing of the Tanana River. It doesn’t fall into the category of watching grass grow, but there are big bucks at stake here. Tonight, at midnight, the deadline for the Nenana Ice Classic will pass. After that, the chance to plop down $2 to guess when the frozen river starts to thaw will be gone. Officials said that a clock mounted on a tripod will be tripped when the ice starts to break up. Nenana, population 400, is 53 miles southwest of Fairbanks. It has run its ice classic for 71 years. This year, because of Alaska’s unsettling economy, the guessing has never been better, said Jan Blair, a Nenana Ice Classic worker. “When the economy is bad, I think people are more inclined to spend $2 on a chance to win a lot of money.” Last year, 147,000 chances were bought, and the winner got $115,000.