The band System 9 entertained several hundred Inverness Fair goers Saturday, Aug. 11, in First Valley. The fair ran from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Gene Ptak of Inverness and Nav Singh, an owner of the Inverness Store, shucked and barbecued oysters throughout the fair as a benefit for Papermill Creek Children’s Corner preschool.

Fairgoers admire the work of several painters, who used an Inverness Way fence for their gallery.

Throughout the fair held at the firehouse green, Terry Aleshire of Inverness gave motorcycle-sidecar rides to kids, plus an occasional parent, as a benefit for the Inverness Garden Club.

Scoby Zook of Inverness during the fair manned a fundraising table for the Dance Palace. Many other nonprofits also had fundraising or informational tables along Inverness Way.

IN OTHER, OLDER NEWS: Many years ago, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen (1916-97) wrote that he kept a file of items to use whenever he had space, so I began keeping a similar file, which I labeled: “Quotes Worth Saving.“

One item from Caen’s file that ended up in mine has to do with Winston Churchill’s famous saying, “The British Navy has survived 300 years of rum, buggery, and the lash.” To this Caen added, “That sounds like another quiet Saturday night South of Market.”

Churchill, of course, had a legendary way with words. Take his comment in a 1939 radio broadcast two months after Stalin and Hitler signed their non-aggression pact: “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”

Has anything changed in the Kremlin? Part of the confusion, of course, results from the fact that folks in Moscow speak Russian.

In October 2000, The Chronicle reported that “Boris Yeltsin scolded Mike Wallace during a 60 Minutes interview: ‘An experienced journalist like yourself should express himself in a more civilized fashion.'” Wallace’s question, “Is Yeltsin thin-skinned about the press?” had been mistranslated as asking whether the former Russian leader was a “thick-skinned hippopotamus.”

One item from my Quotes Worth Saving file concerns James Gordon Bennett Jr., who took over the now-defunct New York Herald Tribune from his late father. “Father had no enemies,” the son commented, “but his friends intensely disliked him.”

Here are a few more newspaper stories from Quotes Worth Saving:

DECATUR, GEORGIA  A man accused of holding up a Domino’s Pizza outlet because he believed he was the target of the company’s “Avoid the Noid” ad campaign has been found not guilty by reason of insanity. [Kenneth] Noid, who was described as “acutely psychotic,” held two employees in the restaurant in Chamblee hostage for nearly six hours in January before he surrendered. Police said Noid thought the pizza maker’s TV commercials (which showed a giggling, red-hatted gremlin called “the Noid,” who tried to chill pizzas before they could be delivered) “were aimed at him.”  Associated Press, 1989

PHILADELPHIA  Two Amish men have been accused of buying cocaine from a motorcycle gang called the Pagans and then distributing it to young members of the conservative religious sect. “Bikes and buggies, it’s a rather strange combination,” Pennsylvania State Police Maj. Robert Werts said of yesterday’s indictment.  Marin Independent Journal, 1998

IRAN  A 16-month-old baby in Iran was found safe and slumbering in the den of a mother bear after being missing for three days. The baby was the child of nomadic parents in western Lorestan province who found their child missing after returning to their tent from the fields. A search party later discovered the toddler in the bear’s den about six miles from the encampment. The team said the child had been breast-fed by the bear; doctors reported the baby was in good health.  Earth Environment Service, 2001

SACRAMENTO  A 26-year-old man was arrested early yesterday for hitting his wife with a frozen squirrel, police said. Police spokeswoman Betsy Braziel said Kao Khae Saephan had been arguing with his wife about 2:30 a.m. when he walked into the kitchen and took several frozen squirrels from the freezer. The woman told police that when she walked into the room, her husband swung the squirrels at her and struck her in the head. Saephan was booked in Sacramento County Jail on suspicion of spousal abuse.  Associated Press, 1991

HARRISON, ARKANSAS  Sun editor Jon Vader testified yesterday that he used a photo of an elderly Arkansas woman to accompany a fabricated article about an aged pregnant woman because he assumed the woman in the photograph was dead. Nellie Mitchell, 96, of Mountain Home is alive and suing The Sun, a tabloid newspaper published in Boca Raton, Florida, for $1 million.  Associated Press, 1991

FRANCE   A three-pound meteorite tore through the roof of a parked car in the French Alpine town of Chambery, setting the vehicle on fire. Police said the small, molten-basalt rock fell from the sky at around 3 a.m. on April 11. The car’s owner, awakened by the crash and fire, refused to believe it was a meteor and insisted on filing an arson complaint with police.  San Francisco Chronicle, 1997

AND FINALLY  “For many in the West, diseases are a bit like birds: everyone gets them, but poor countries have more exotic species.”  The Economist, Aug. 11-17, 2007