People: Sep. 3, 1965

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"This is my greatest opportunity," beamed Duke Ellington, 66. "I'd be afraid to come in if I didn't believe in what I was doing. The cathedral might fall on my head." Buttressing the Duke's belief at San Francisco's Grace Cathedral were Dean Julian Bartlett and California's Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike, who think that the Sept. 16 experimental concert of Ellington's specially composed sacred music will be one of their "greatest opportunities" to "display the glory of God's creation." The music will be based on the first four words of Genesis ("In the beginning God . . ."), but the Duke indicated with suave mysticism that the hymning will be hip. "When your pulse and my pulse are together," he preached, "we're swinging."

Cloaked in inscrutability and her undying charm, Madame Chiang Kaishek, 67, flew into the U.S. for her first visit since 1958. Immediately, she had everyone wondering whether the tour might include a stop at the White House and some talks about the future of Formosa, but Nationalist China's First Lady gracefully sidestepped all questions about her purposes. She said she would like to visit President Johnson, but added that no advance arrangements had been made. Then Madame Chiang visited relatives and friends in San Francisco, revealing a bit of gossip about her husband. "In the last two years he has gained 15 Ibs.," she beamed.

Yachts, yachts, yachts. New York's Senator Jacob Javits, 61, scampered up the gangway of what he thought was the Honey Fitz outward bound for U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach's floating dinner party for the Senate Judiciary Committee. "Isn't that just like Lyndon?" thought Javits. "If there is a party somewhere in town, he'll be there." For his part, L.B.J. must have pondered whether it was just like Jack Javits to be crashing a presidential party for foreign diplomats aboard the Secretary of the Navy's yacht Sequoia. As both official craft cruised out into the middle of the Potomac, Lyndon kidded Jack about "stowing away," then piped him aboard a power launch that put him in the right boat.