Providentially, It’s an Open City

--Hundreds of Rhode Island residents called authorities and a radio station to see if they could sleep late after another station’s April Fool’s Day announcement that the city of Providence would be closed. “We didn’t think the entire city would be convulsed,” said Glenn Stewart, assistant program director for WHJY-FM. “I don’t know what it says about the listeners. I guess many people just didn’t realize it was April Fool’s Day.” The joke was the brainchild of disc jockey Carolyn Fox, who announced at 6:20 a.m. that the fictitious “Providence Labor Action Relations Board Committee” had decided that the city would be closed and people should go home. Fox gave out the phone number of a rival station, WPRO-AM, for people to call for more information. “If they had called WPRO, they would have found out it was a joke,” Stewart said. But WPRO wasn’t laughing--it reported receiving hundreds of calls. After letting listeners in on the ruse, Fox announced: “By the way, Providence is open.”

--Two New York City park rangers disguised as nature lovers used a surveillance camera and walkie-talkie to get the goods on a bespectacled botanist who calls himself “Wildman.” They caught Steve Brill in the act, handcuffed him and hustled him to the precinct station. Book him, officials said, after searching his backpack. The charge? Eating the daisies in Central Park. Brill confessed in a telephone interview: “We picked dandelions and a few other common weeds. We ate a few high-bush cranberries . . . a little bit of water mint . . . and some day lily shoots.” Brill conducts walking tours of New York City parks, showing urban dwellers which plants are edible and offering recipes. But the Parks and Recreation Department says it warned Brill about the edible tours. While he was taking a group on a recent tour, one mysterious couple turned out to be undercover rangers. Park officers arrested Brill on misdemeanor charges of criminal mischief. He was ordered to appear in court April 18. Brill insisted he is not a criminal. “I’m just trying to get people into nature, to show them they can touch things and smell things and taste them.” Touching and smelling is OK, Parks Commissioner Henry Stern said, but not tasting. “Our motto is: ‘Please don’t eat the daisies.’ It’s like going through the zoo and eating the bear cubs,” Stern said.

--Prince Charles and Princess Diana traveled by underground train to open Heathrow Airport’s new $290-million international air terminal in London. The prince, his arm in a sling from a gardening accident, needed his wife’s help to cut the blue ribbon.