Of New Ark, Newark Says Noah Way; Judge Says OK

--A judge has come to the rescue of a woman ordered to abandon ship by Newark, N.J., officials. The ship in question is a three-story, 20-by-90-foot ark that Kea Tawana has been building for five years amid the rubble of abandoned buildings and litter-strewn lots in Newark. The vessel had been declared unsafe and in violation of zoning codes by city officials who ordered Tawana, 47, to stop construction. But Superior Court Judge Harry A. Margolis issued a temporary restraining order barring the city from tearing down the ark, according to his legal secretary, Mary Frasca. Margolis granted Tawana permission to pursue a zoning variance, and Tawana’s attorney, Fred Zemel, said she had filed for one. Zemel also said that, at the judge’s instructions, Tawana corrected fire code violations at the site. Margolis will hold a hearing later on a request for a permanent injunction, Frasca said. Tawana says she wants the ship as a home on the water because “it’s not safe to live on the land anymore.”

--Their years of experience apparently added just the right ingredient as two centenarians created what was judged the best apple pie in New England. Louise Waid, 105, and Tillie Bothwell, 101, residents of the Quaboag Nursing Home in West Brookfield, Mass., said they had been baking pies since they were teen-agers. Eight judges in Brookfield picked the pair’s pie over those of nine other finalists, weeded out from 490 entrants. Last year at the finals, Waid and Bothwell said they were so nervous that they both added sugar to the pie instead of just one of them doing so. But this year, they put in just the right amount and won. “I feel like crying,” Bothwell said. Waid added: “It’s the last thing I expected. But I knew it was a good pie.” They won a pewter apple, a $100 check and a trip to Old Sturbridge Village in central Massachusetts.

--Seriously now, a group of Soviet humorists think Americans are too giggly. The Washington-based Workshop Library on World Humor, a private group, sponsored a two-week tour of the United States by the five Soviet citizens. “We never considered America to be a nation of gloomy people. Now, as a result of our trip, we came to understand that they smile and laugh and giggle perhaps too much,” said Alexei Pyanov, editor of Krokodil, the Soviet Union’s most popular satire magazine. Andrey Benyukh, deputy foreign editor of Krokodil, said he was shocked by “jokes of sick or ‘black humor’ about physical disabilities or diseases. This kind of humor is not an optimistic one. We prefer more intellectual jokes,” he said. A U.S. delegation will travel to the Soviet Union next year.