CONFERENCE CALL: Parents in the Santa Ana...

CONFERENCE CALL: Parents in the Santa Ana Unified School District are being urged to do some homework of their own before attending parent-teacher conferences. . . . The district has produced a new video telling parents how to prepare for the conference, urging them to write down questions beforehand and to be on time. “Many of the parents come from families where their parents were not involved,” said district spokeswoman Lucinda G. Hundley. “So for some of these parents, these are new skills.”

AND THE WINNER IS: “It’s not often a lawyer gets the chance to both roil the financial markets and rescue a major municipality,” says the National Law Journal, citing Orange County’s Bruce Bennett as “Runner-up Lawyer of the Year,” along with Lawrence R. Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law. . . . The journal calls Bennett a “helmsman who maneuvered Orange County through uncharted legal waters.” And who bested Bennett for top honors? That helmsman to Heisman Trophy winners, Johnnie Cochran.

HUNGRY? Yorba Linda resident Ronald Taylor, co-author of the book “Entertaining With Insects,” is busy creating new recipes to show off at the Orange County Fair this summer where he will demonstrate the latest in bug cuisine. . . . His favorite? The larvae of wax moth. “When you drop them into a shallow layer of oil, they immediately expand and explode and look like a small puff of popcorn. You just salt them and eat them. They are very, very tasty.”

HOTEL CAMPAIGN: After lying dormant since the late ‘80s, Hotel and Restaurant Employees Local 681 pledges to make 1996 the year of organizing. Its first target: the sprawling Hyatt Newporter in Newport Beach. (D1) . . . Organizers say they have support from most of the workers. Hotel management disagrees and hints at firm resistance.