When Mary Lyon founded her school for girls in 1837, she avoided the word college because the "benevolent gentlemen" whose support she needed might not approve. Mount Holyoke "seminary" eventually did become a college, and several gentlemen became its president. Now, after 41 years, Holyoke is again to be headed by a woman: Elizabeth Kennan, 39, an associate professor of history and director of medieval and Byzantine studies at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. A Holyoke alumna, Kennan believes that only in women's colleges can women develop the strength to deal with the "crosscutting responsibilities of family life." As a wife and mother, Kennan knows first hand about those responsibilities. She also finds time to ride her two horses, one of which is named Bishop. "If I want to get away," she says, "I can just say I'm out with the bishop."

Why is Vida blue? The Oakland Athletics star pitcher had hoped to leave his losing team (last year's record: 63-98) and join the talent-heavy Cincinnati Reds. But Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, who nixed the plans of Oakland A's Owner Charley Finley to sell Blue to the Yankees for $1.5 million in 1976, once again ruled no. Kuhn has set an informal ceiling on player sales--$400,000--and Finley this time was asking $1.75 million for Blue. Besides, declared Kuhn, "conduct which unreasonably saps the game of competitive balance surely is not in the best interests of baseball." The prickly Finley vowed to pursue the matter--in court.

It was the 50th anniversary of a high note, Andres Segovia's first U.S. tour, and, as part of the celebration, the classical guitarist played before a sellout audience of 3,200 at San Francisco's Masonic Auditorium. "This guitar refuses to stay in tune," he complained, and later he apologized: "Tonight my guitar was not my sweetheart. It was my enemy." Segovia, 84, lives in Madrid where he is working on his four-volume autobiography. which he likes to think of as four movements of a sonata.

Once he barreled across the scrimmage line, all 6 ft. 8 in., 285 lbs. of him, as the crowd chanted: "Kill, Bubba, kill!" But Charles Aaron ("Bubba") Smith, the former defensive left end for the Baltimore Colts, collided with an aluminum yard marker in 1972, suffered a severe knee injury, and was later forced to give up the game. Now, in an unprecedented legal case, Smith, 32, is asking $1.5 million from the N.F.L. in a negligence suit. He claims that officials failed to remove the marker in time when the action flowed toward the sidelines. To help his case, Smith brought in Sportscaster Howard Cosell, who told a Tampa, Fla., courtroom that after his accident Smith was "a shell of a player." It was all too much for the jury, which couldn't come to a decision. The judge declared a mistrial.

He forded a crocodile-infested river to escape from South Africa because he had been banned from writing or speaking freely. Now Journalist Donald Woods is making up for lost time. On a visit to the U.S., Woods, 44, gave a speech before the United Nations Security Council stressing the use of "moral force" to end apartheid. He also testified before a House subcommittee and met with Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. Beginning next July, Woods will write and give speeches as a Nieman fellow, one of a dozen or so journalists chosen to study at Harvard University. Says James C. Thomson Jr., curator of the Nieman Foundation: "He wants to spread the word against apartheid far and wide."

Back at the ranch, Big John Connally's younger brother and former campaign manager is sitting pretty. After landing two movie roles, including a bit part in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the cattleman has turned novelist. The hero is a retired Texas politician summoned to Washington to cope with an Arab oil embargo in the year 1980. Who could it be? Well, drawls Merrill, 57, "you might say the character is a lot like someone I've known all my life."

Lady Bird Johnson was close to tears, said bystanders, the day Eartha Kitt spoke out emotionally at a White House luncheon. American boys, she protested, were being "snatched off to be shot in Viet Nam." For a decade the entertainer was unofficially banned from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But last week she was back, along with several hundred other guests, including her daughter, Kitt McDonald, 16. The occasion: a reception in honor of the tenth anniversary of the restoration of Ford's Theater. "First I thought I shouldn't go," said Kitt, 50, who attended between performances in the musical Timbuktu! at Washington's Kennedy Center. "Now I'm very glad I went. Mr. Carter looked at me and he smiled as though he understood."

On the Record

John Ryman, British Labor M.P., explaining his plans to pass up a debate in the Parliament and watch a football game: "Football is more important than politics, and footballers are more amusing than politicians."

Jorge Luis Borges, Argentine author: "There's something infamous about the tango. How can I put it? Something brutal and at the same time sentimental. Like Wagner."

Benjamin Mays, president emeritus of Morehouse College, on the U.S. today: "If this is a melting pot, I don't want the Negro to melt away."

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