In 1964, Missionary Dr. Paul Carlson, 36, was held hostage for three months by rebellious Congolese soldiers in Stanleyville. Then, as Belgian paratroopers raced to the rescue, he and 17 other prisoners were gunned down. Carlson and his missionary-nurse wife had a strong belief in the will of God, and to honor her husband's unshakable faith, Lois Carlson, 38, has now returned to the Congo. She will pick a spot for a medical foundation to be built with funds raised by U.S. donations--in memory of Dr. Paul.

There she is, alone in the jungle, menaced by a great, girl-eating tiger. She buys him off with her beautiful green sash. Then an alligator wants to eat her. Thinking fast, she trades her little blue dress for her life. And so it goes, as tropical stripteaser Little White Squibba faces more perils than Pauline. Squibba is the heroine of a just-published British children's book by the late Helen Bannerman, famed for her 1899 classic Little Black Sambo. The manuscript had been in her lawyer's safe for 20 years. But why is Squibba white? The author never lets on. After Sambo's fabulous success, there had followed a whole Bannerman series of Little Black books: Mingo, Bobtail, Quasha and Quibba. Whatever her color, Squibba loves the same things her little black predecessors did, and ends her adventures with a pile of pancakes just like the ones Black Mumbo whipped up for Sambo 67 years ago.

The name's the same, but somehow it has lost that old magic--at least to the cops out in Santa Monica, Calif. In the days when Peter Lawford was married to Pat Kennedy, the local police were only too happy to let a helicopter plop down on the public beach by his ocean-front home and whisk him off. Pat has divorced him now, and everything's changed. "Peter who?" asked the captain on duty when Los Angeles Air Taxi Service made its 28th routine request for landing permission. Request denied. Lawford ordered the copter to pick him up anyway. Next day, the taxi service's president was slapped with a summons for an unauthorized landing, given a ten-day suspended sentence and a year's probation. "If it was O.K. for the late President to land there when he visited me," said Lawford, "then it's O.K. for me--a private citizen." Uh-huh.

All the tribes were gathered for their annual powwow in Sheridan, Wyoming. The Arapaho came, and the Shoshoni and the Cheyenne. And as they met, they pondered the weighty question: Who would be elected Miss Indian American of 1966? Last year it was a Kiowa squaw and before that an Arapaho. This year the judges faced south and chose a pretty Pueblo maiden. As beauty queens go, Wahleah Lujan, 18, might be a mite plump, but she had a face Pocahontas could envy and plenty of other assets: a sophomore at Colorado's Fort Lewis College, her primitive Indian abstractions are good enough to hang in both the Chicago Art Institute, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Wahleah was properly tearful at the honor, and absolutely overwhelmed at being allowed to pose in her tribe's sacred feathered headdress.

Every folk singer worth his guitar has got to have a motorcycle. It's a symbol of status, or maybe antistatus. Such a symbol comes dear, as it did to promising young Singer Richard Farina, who died in a cycle accident in April. Folk Hero Bob Dylan, 25, was luckier--but not by much. He was buzzing along on his Triumph 500 near Woodstock, N.Y., when the rear wheel froze, flipping him off and onto the pavement. Dylan was rushed to a doctor and will spend at least two months in bed, recuperating from a neck fracture, a concussion (he wasn't wearing a helmet), and severe face and back cuts.

None of that stuffy oldtime ribbon-snipping for Mayor John V. Lindsay. New York, says His Honor, is a "fun city," and he and his merry men do things that way. Out in Central Park to dedicate a new Fountain Cafe, Lindsay and Parks Commissioner Thomas Hoving dragooned City Greeter Sharman Douglas and former Miss America Bess Myerson into rowing them around the lake ("Stroke, stroke, stroke!" cried Lindsay), engaged in an oar-slapping water fight with pursuing newsmen (who seriously considered sinking the mayor's "Ship of State"), captured a tiny snail ("Escargot," they announced), cooked an omelet, and toured the environs atop a "cherry picker" used to replace street lights. Funny.

If there is anything the Irish admire more than a first-class horseman, it's a chap with a tongue touched with blarney. And to have both in the same man, now there's a fine ambassador for the Americans to be sending. Of course, Raymond Guest, 58, noted Virginia horse breeder and financier, did warn them when he arrived last year that he "intended to be the kind of American you would like to see in your country." So it was no surprise when he showed up at the Dublin Horse Show astride his eight-year-old gelding, properly named Shaun, and proceeded to ride off with the walk-trot-canter event, even though he had not ridden competitively for 25 years. "I am delighted and grateful to have a win at the best horse show in the world," murmured the ambassador as he accepted his prize.

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