Vital Work: A strike that hit a...

Vital Work: A strike that hit a luxury Manhattan apartment building Sunday found movie stars and ex-mayors running elevators and sweeping trash, but former Congresswoman Bella Abzug was not one of them. “I don’t want to take over people’s jobs,” she said. But while 15,000 doormen, security personnel and cleaners struck across New York for better wages, ex-mayor Ed Koch signed up as a doorman: “Why shouldn’t I? I live here.”

* Vital Visions: An increased number of “sightings” of Jesus Christ and Mary around the world is giving impetus to a conference on such apparitions in July in Pittsburgh. Visionaries and mystics from Switzerland, the Soviet Union, Nicaragua and Ireland will join the gathering on “Apparitions of the Mother of God and Her Divine Son.”

* Vital Style: Do U.S. diplomats in Latin America speak Spanish? the president wanted to know. Is it necessary to fork out $300,000 on the U.S. ambassador’s home in Seoul? The president was John F. Kennedy and his workaday style included dashing off plain-language memos to his staff, said Edward B. Claflin in his new book “JFK Wants to Know.” Those fancy charity balls in New York--were they tax dodges? “It would be interesting to see how much went to charity and how much is kept by those putting on the balls,” said one query to the secretary of the Treasury.

* Vital Vitamins: Students at Yale University saw scientist Linus Pauling, 90, who for years has heralded the values of vitamins, shake his head at disbelievers recently. “I continue to be surprised that this was one of the great discoveries that has not been utilized by human beings,” he told the standing-room-only crowd. The Nobel laureate says extra-large doses of vitamins can fight cancer, AIDS and the common cold.