That was no Red Headed Stranger standing in the Oval Office in braids and denim pants. That was outlaw Country Star Willie Nelson presenting President Carter with a Steuben bowl for the President's efforts on behalf of country music. The award was recently created to honor people who make unique contributions to country music, and when the votes for the first recipient were counted, Carter was told, "lo and behold, your name led all the rest." Considering some of the other polls the President has been reading lately, that was sweet music indeed.

She once claimed the White House sent her flowers bugged to record her hospital room conversations, but now she fights only the bugs in her vegetable garden. Dita Beard, who set off more than just a barnyard squabble eight years ago when she allegedly composed a memo hinting that her employer, ITT, had bribed the Republican Party, today has a small farm in West Virginia, complete with garden, two goats, three dogs and two cats. "In the beginning I went into farming in a big way," explains Beard. Then came the revelation: "An actual farmer I am not." The woman who suffered chest pains--and a visit from a red-wigged Howard Hunt--around the time she was called upon to testify about the memo still feels "lousy, more because of mileage than years." Having exchanged the world of cover-ups for that of coveralls, at 60 she passes her days "relaxing and getting fat," and presumably keeping her distance from the Dictaphone.

Whatever Jimmy Carter has done as President, it was not without Reason. Commander Joseph Paul Reason, U.S.N.. 38, that is, who as the President's naval aide has also been his bagman. Reason dogged Carter across the country and the world carrying a familiar black bag, a.k.a. "the football," stuffed with necessary signal codes and target information in case the President had to order instant retaliation for a nuclear attack. Reason, who at 6 ft. 3 in. is easily visible behind his 5-ft, 9 1/2-in. fellow Annapolis graduate, had to scramble last month when Carter, vacationing in Plains, slipped away to go fishing alone without informing anyone. The bagman is tossing in his football because if Reason ever expects to make admiral, he needs more sea duty. He leaves the White House to become executive officer of the nuclear cruiser U.S.S. Mississippi.

Fereydoun Hoveida, 54, has taken the advice that personnel experts usually dish out to business executives who get the sack: Use your new free time doing something you have been wanting to do. Hoveida, fired as Iran's longtime United Nations ambassador by the revolutionary regime, is devoting his time to writing and art. The deposed diplomat, who in the past penned essays, film criticisms and six novels, has turned to nonfiction: the events that led to the downfall of the Shah and the execution of Hoveida's older brother, former Premier Amir Abbas Hoveida. Meanwhile, a Manhattan gallery is showing 37 examples of his Persian calligraphy, which consists of colorful, paper-on-paper abstractions. Eighteen have already been sold at prices ranging from $300 to $1,100.

If Basketball Superstar Bill Bradley can be elected U.S. Senator, why not Football Supercoach Woody Hayes, 66? Some Ohio Republicans ask that as they seek a candidate to face Democrat John Glenn, who after all won his seat five years ago because he had been the first U.S. astronaut to orbit the earth. Hayes, coach of Ohio State superteams for 28 years, is a Republican with strong views and statewide recognition for his patriotic speeches on the American way. Before his Columbus goodbye to coaching last winter, Hayes was famous for turfing his cap over a bad play or bulling a photographer out of his 205-Ib.-weight path. He was finally fired for whonking a Clemson linebacker who made the mistake of intercepting an O.S.U. Gator Bowl pass and running it back along Woody's sideline. If "Coach" beats Glenn, imagine what might happen to a liberal Senator who lined up slant-left on some issue Woody takes to heart.

Oh, to be in Cannes, now that spring's there. And with the season comes the resort's film festival and the high and flighty of filmdom. The rituals were reassuring, as ever. Starlets unstrapped for paparazzi; Kirk Douglas drove up between tennis matches; Yves Montand did the scene hand-in-grin with Lauren Bacall; and Karen Black's cleavage was a star attraction at the Playgirl Club. One involuntary cancellation: Director Stan (Love at First Bite) Dragoti, who was nipped in Frankfurt by airport security devices that beeped a foil-wrapped 24-gm cocaine packet taped to his back.

For all the usual fluff and kisses, it was an unusually vintage American year at Cannes. The China Syndrome, Norma Rae and Days of Heaven were entered in the competition, and Hair and Manhattan were screened for sheer pleasure. Hair Director Milos Forman and his cast cavorted on the beaches. George Hamilton, star of Dragoti's First Bite, hammed it up as Dracula. Manhattan's nova, Mariel Hemingway, was on hand, chaperoned by her father Jack.

But it was Apocalypse Now, dubbed Apocalypse Maybe by cynics that stirred the most anticipation. Shown by Godfather I & II Francis Ford Coppola as a "work in progress," the movie seems to have taken him almost as long to make as the Viet Nam War that is its subject lasted. In Cannes, Coppola anchored a quarter-mile off the coast aboard a rented (for $4,000 a day) yacht. He came ashore at one point to attend a press conference called by Director Roman Polanski. Polanski, who had Starlet Nastassja Kinski, 18, on his arm all week, baldly promised that he was planning to return to California to face a sentence for having sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl. In Cannes's past, a heavyweight like Coppola would have usurped such a conference. Trouble was that Coppola has undergone such an apocalyptic weight loss--100 Ibs. since shooting began on his extravaganza--that the festival's headhunters scarcely recognized him.

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