Dust was thick on the Kenya plains as touring Queen Mother Elizabeth beamed down at Narok on rows of proud, bellicose Masai warriors, resplendent in lion-skin headdresses. Touching briefly on a local morale problem, Her Majesty expressed the hope that rain would soon fall in Kenya, which had suffered a four-month drought. Hardly had she finished speaking when the rains came--so heavy that roads turned to sludge, and the Queen's car barely made it to the airstrip for her flight to Mombasa. But the Masai, water cascading off their lion skins, trudged happily homewards, more loyal than ever to their rainmaking Queen.

Ex-Communist Whittaker (Witness) Chambers, 57, rusty now in a language he could read and write passably in his literary youth, signed up for an early-dawning TV course in elementary Russian offered by Washington's George Washington University.

After nearly three years of widowhood, Comedienne Portland Hoffa, 54, professionally zany co-player in Allen's Alley with her late husband, radio's raspy Satirist Fred Allen, announced that she would be married this week to an old friend. Adman and sometime Bandleader Joe Rines, 56, in the same actors' chapel where Chorine Hoffa and Vaudevillian Allen were married 32 years ago--St. Malachy's Roman Catholic Church on Manhattan's West Side.

Drifting unobtrusively across the country as the guest of the Defense Department, Greece's Ivy Leaguish Crown Prince Constantine, at 18 a second lieutenant in his country's army, navy and air force, paused on a tour of Hollywood's wonders for a chat with veteran Cinemenace Peter Lorre, somewhat whey-faced in his makeup for the role of a clown in MGM's The Big Circus.

In India for a gander at its industrial progress, New York's ex-Governor Averell Harriman found New Delhi newsmen singularly intrigued by his now dormant role in U.S. politics. Did he have any chances of securing the presidency? "No chances at all," said Honest Ave. But, demanded another, did the Governor have White House ambitions? Answered Harriman, somewhat more briskly: "Neither--no chances or ambitions."

Radiant Housewife Margaret Truman Daniel confirmed the rumor: some time next June Elder Statesman Harry Truman should become a grandfather for the second time.

Dealing out annual awards, the American Society of Civil Engineers honored, with a prize for outstanding research, University of California Professor Hans Albert Einstein, 54, son of Physicist Albert. Engineer Hans's contribution to science, more down-to-earth than his late father's famed E = mc2 formula, was "to the knowledge of transportation of sediment in flowing water."

Now that he is 65, suggested the form letter from the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance, would he care to exercise his right to a retirement allowance of $7 a week? Wrote back Prime Minister Harold Macmillan: not yet.

On Capitol Hill there were signs of an early spring thaw. Mellowed by his long bout with cancer (TIME, Feb. 16), Oregon's Democratic Senator Richard Neuberger went back to work, was greeted on the Senate floor by a crowd of well-wishers, headed by none other than his frosty old foe and senior colleague, Wayne Morse. Said Morse: "It is good to have him back with us." Replied Neuberger gaily: "So far as I am concerned, we will work together." Putting words into action, the two showed up for an Oregon centennial party next day, jointly labored through a dab of cake.

Amidst a dinkum welcome to Australia, at the start of a five-month "crusade for Christ," Evangelist Billy Graham was asked whether he thought his revival gatherings would have a lasting effect, responded with disarming realism: "The effects of a bath don't last long, but you need it, and it's good for you."

The U.S. Air Force popped a promotion list into the senatorial hopper, then waited for the what-for. On the roster: drawling Cinemactor and Reserve Colonel James (Strategic Air Command) Stewart, once refused promotion to brigadier general two years ago (TIME, Sept. 2, 1957) after Maine's Senator Margaret Chase Smith, herself a reserve lieutenant colonel with an administrative assistant hopeful of a star-sized Pentagon mobilization assignment, sounded off on War Hero Stewart's skimpy training record. Promising nothing, Colonel Smith still seemed a trifle dubious: "I don't think reserve promotions ought to be taken lightly as they sometimes are." But this time, the Air Force, convinced that Jimmy's training file was fat enough, resubmitted his name on a list with at least one name likely to escape senatorial veto: Arizona's jet-jockeying Republican Senator Barry Goldwater.

Driving home from a do at the home of a business comrade, the San Francisco Giants' Manager Bill Rigney steered off a true course. His car jumped the curb, hit a power pole. Score: a fractured collarbone and jaw for Bill, a broken hip, deep cuts on scalp and legs for wife Paula.

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