Our Town: Around Town

TALL SHIPS . . . Historic ship buffs won't want to miss tours of two replicas of historic tall ships that will be coming to the Port of Redwood City next Tuesday. The ships, replicas of two 18th century merchant vessels, Lady Washington and Hawaiian Chieftain, will be at the Port of Redwood City Nov. 18-24 and at Pillar Point from Nov. 26-30. Lady Washington, built out of Douglas fir, is a replica of the first American ship to round Cape Horn and make it to the Pacific Northwest. Crews will be dressed in traditional costumes and will give local school children and the public a taste of what life was like aboard the ships, from raising sails by hand to navigation techniques. Public tours in both ports will be from 3:30 to 6 p.m. weekdays and 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays.

HEADING EAST . . . The U.S. Senate voted Nov. 9 to confirm the appointment of Arthur Bienenstock, Stanford professor of materials science and applied physics, as the associate director for science of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Bienenstock recently served as the associate director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) and director of SLAC's Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory.

TONGUE TWISTER . . . Try saying "UCSF Stanford Health Care Palo Alto" quickly. Since Nov. 1, that's been the challenge for telephone operators at the former Stanford Medical Center, which officially merged with UCSF at the beginning of the month. Operators at UCSF in San Francisco are more fortunate: their relatively pithy title since Nov. 1 is "UCSF Stanford." Administrative staff at the medical center that used to call their employer "Stanford Hospital" only are apparently concerned that the new names are a little unwieldy. They are supposedly drafting a list of new titles soon. In the meantime, staff are a little confused. "We don't even know what to call our own facilities," a hospital spokeswoman said.

SCHOOL ISSUES DISCUSSED ... The Palo Alto PTA Council is inviting the public to attend an Educational Issues Conference on Thursday, Nov. 20 at JLS Middle School from 7-9 p.m. The conference is an opportunity for the community to listen and ask questions about critical issues facing Palo Alto schools. Workshops to be discussed will be: Choice, the whys and hows of offering options; Crowded schools, larger campuses; Achieving equity among our schools; are the middle schools meeting our goals?; and Impacts of Class Size Reduction. Superintendent Don Phillips will be the keynote speaker.

PARENTS, MEET M-A ... Menlo-Atherton High School will be holding a Parents Information Night on Nov. 18 for parents of incoming students. There will be a panel discussion of "going-ons" at Menlo-Atherton beginning at 7 p.m. Parents of current seventh and eighth graders are invited to the events, which will be held in the J Building on the campus.

NAMES AND NOTES . . . Hoover Institution Deputy Director Charles Palm has been elected chairman of the California Heritage Preservation Commission . . . An anonymous donor has contributed $25,000 to the Friends of the Palo Alto Library as a challenge gift toward the group's goal of $50,000 by year's end.

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