National Press Club

Gertrude Dieken, 92, an Iowa farm girl who after coming East broke ground in agricultural journalism, died last Saturday of congestive heart failure at Pennswood Village in Middletown Township, Buck County. She had been a resident of Pennswood Village for eight years after living in Philadelphia for 45. Born in Grundy County, Iowa, Miss Dieken moved to the Philadelphia region in 1942 to join DuPont's public-relations department. Three years later, Farm Journal magazine, which is based in Philadelphia, hired her as the first woman editor of the Farmer's Wife, a family magazine within Farm Journal.

One of the perverse rules of behavior of the Washington press corps is our tendency to savor being told secrets while ignoring what is on the public record. Eight years ago, there was a huge furor when William Greider published the previously private views of budget director David A. Stockman on the perils of the fiscal policy he had helped create and move through Congress earlier that year. Stockman's phrases - his observation, for example, that "the hogs were really feeding" when the special-interest lobbies finished with the tax bill - created a sensation.

Does Gov. Casey appear more robust lately? Does his face seem a little tanner, his smile a bit brighter, his cheekbones a tad higher? If so, it's probably not your imagination. It's Kellie Teets. She's the governor's makeup artist and, as far as anyone knows, the first to get paid expressly to powder-puff Pennsylvania's top political puss. And looking good doesn't come cheap. Casey's first three professional makeup jobs - for his State of the Commonwealth address and a speech to the National Press Club in January, and his budget address in February - cost $450.

Politicians who come to speak at the National Press Club have become accustomed to receiving introductions that are pointed and irreverent. It is a tradition. But sometimes, to some ears, those introductions can sound nasty and disrespectful. That is the way the introduction of Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D., Del.) sounded yesterday to Joseph R. Biden Jr. And, before delivering a speech on arms control, Biden let his listeners know exactly how he felt about the way he had been treated.

Celebrating the creative flow by supporting women engaged in the artistic pursuits of "pen, pencil and brush" is what the Chester County Branch of the National League of American Pen Women is about. "The writers are interested in the artists, and the artists are interested in the writers. The creative process is the same no matter what your media is," said Susan Calkins, who paints watercolors and creates mixed media collages, and is president of the club. The group has no musicians right now, and new members are being sought for the women-only club.

In a recent speech at the National Press Club, Katie Couric expressed somber disapproval of the jingoistic excesses after 9/11. Among the things that vexed her: "The whole culture of wearing flags on our lapel and saying 'we' when referring to the United States. " From what I can tell, nobody among the journalistic swells bothered to ask, "Who isn't 'we,' Kemo Sabe?" I don't want to revisit those flag pins, which sat so heavily on so many journalistic lapels. But it's worth recalling that during World War II, civilian correspondent Walter Cronkite - whose anchor job Couric now holds - gladly wore a uniform, not just a pin, and subjected himself to military censors.

Oklahoma's Josh Heupel and Bob Stoops won the Walter Camp player and coach-of-the-year awards yesterday. Heupel, quarterback for the No. 1 Sooners, led the team to an 11-0 record. In only his second year, Stoops took Oklahoma to the top of the national rankings for the first time since 1987. It marked only the third time a player and coach from the same school were honored in the same year. The winners of the awards, named for the former Yale coach who helped develop the rules of the game, are picked by a national panel of Division I-A coaches and sports information directors.

Attention, all would-be political impresarios: If you stage it - and Colin Powell's name is on the marquee - they will come. "They" are the media, filling the vacuum left by Powell's presidential speculation with rampant speculation of their own. They are starved for insider information about what is obviously a closely held process. Where to turn? Well, the drama of the general's march to his own Rubicon has created a cottage industry of groups trying to hitch themselves to the four-starred Powell.

Well, you live and learn. All the years I've been in the newspaper business, I thought of my fellow- journalists as tough cookies, with hides at least as calloused as a middle linebacker's. All the years I've covered politics, I believed that the men and women in government could take the heat. In the last few weeks, I've learned how wrong I was. Journalists who have worked in government turn out to be, in conspicuous cases, sensitive souls who, like adolescents, either whimper or rage when they feel their honor has been insulted.

The National Coalition on Television Violence has expanded its vigilance to include books and has declared the work of Robert Ludlum, Mario Puzo, James Clavell, Stephen King, John le Carre, Frederick Forsyth and the late Helen MacInnes as the nation's most violent. In its survey of best-selling fiction, the group concluded that readers were "entertaining themselves with more hate-filled, sadistic and gruesome material than any previous generation of human beings in history. " SERVING THE HOMELESS Tres rich businessman Victor Posner is quietly serving his court-ordered sentence of 5,000 hours of community service at a Miami shelter for the homeless.