NEWS LITE : STARS TELL TALE OF CHRISTMAS COW.

Big names like Randy Travis and Cloris Leachman are helping a Memphis holiday tradition go national.

The story of Clarabell the Christmas cow, which ran every year in the The Commercial Appeal of Memphis, is now an animated TV special.

Renamed ``Annabelle's Wish,'' it's the tale of a caring cow who wants to become one of Santa's reindeer but instead gets Santa to restore the speech of a mute boy.

Joining Travis and Leachman as voices on the show airing today on Fox were Jerry Van Dyke, Jim Varney and Rue McClanahan.

The story was written in 1975 by Dan Henderson, a former assistant managing editor of The Commercial Appeal.

Retreat to get back into music

For decades the Big Pink, a salmon-colored Catskills retreat where Bob Dylan recorded ``The Basement Tapes,'' has been just a place to live.

Soon it will become a studio again.

The three-bedroom mountain hideaway outside Saugerties, N.Y., where Dylan and the Band wrote dozens of songs during one late-'60s period has been on the market for years.

A buyer finally turned up last week.

Linda Mesch plans to transform it into a shrine to the rock icons that recorded there - making the basement a recording studio for noncommercial musicians.

The New York Times said she's agreed to pay $149,000 cash.

Dylan recorded ``The Basement Tapes'' in the house in 1967. The Band recorded demos for their ``Music From Big Pink'' album there later that year.

Woman's experience haunts her

A woman whose psychiatrist diagnosed her with 126 personalities, including Satan and a duck, says she still has trouble leading a normal life.

``I still have nightmares,'' Nadean Cool told The Associated Press on Saturday. ``When you live through something in hypnosis, it's like you're there anyway.''

Cool accepted a $2.4 million settlement in a malpractice case against Dr. Kenneth C. Olson, who was accused of falsely convincing Cool she had multiple personalities.

Olson, now living in Bozeman, Mont., claims it was Cool who said she had a split personality.

The 45-year-old former nurse's aide talked about her experience in an interview with the CBS program ``60 Minutes.'' The segment is scheduled to air tonight.

Cool claimed she went to Olson in 1986 because she was depressed. But after six years of treatment, Cool was left suicidal, haunted by false memories and believing she was, among other things, an angel who talked to God.

Olson, who admitted no wrongdoing, did not respond to a message left on his office answering machine Saturday.

Baldwin may be poised to enter political arena

Every eye is on Alec Baldwin, smartly dressed in a dark blue jacket and turtleneck, as he bounds to a New York stage clutching a leather satchel. Taking a seat, he begins feverishly scribbling notes for a speech.

He's only a few blocks from Broadway, but Baldwin isn't acting in a play.

``We are now positioned,'' he tells his audience at the midtown YWCA, ``to have truly great and well-examined and meaningful campaign finance reform.''

The 15-minute speech to the City Women's Club was part of a stream of recent political appearances by Baldwin. In one whirlwind week, he campaigned for Democratic candidates, played host at a benefit for breast cancer research, and urged that a leaking nuclear reactor be closed near his home in the posh Hamptons on eastern Long Island. Baldwin is president of the Creative Coalition, a celebrity activist group.

This is the role the blue-eyed, 39-year-old actor may have been born to play: liberal activist, social conscience and - some say - future politician.

``Mother said he'd be president,'' his sister Beth recently told Time magazine.

Baldwin, who has been coy about a future in politics, declined to be interviewed. His publicist, Lisa Kasteller, said he was busy preparing for an upcoming movie.

But he certainly toys with the idea of running for office.

``I've thought about it,'' he told New York magazine. ``Is it something that I want to do? Yes. Is this something that I believe is possible? I doubt it.''

Some of his colleagues would love to see him try.

Still, doubts have followed many actors who give up the greasepaint for politics - and Baldwin would be far from the first.

Fred Thompson, who acted with him in ``The Hunt for Red October,'' is now a senator from Tennessee. There's also been Sen. George Murphy; Mayor Clint Eastwood; Rep. Fred Grandy of TV's ``Love Boat'' fame, and another celebrity congressman, Sonny Bono. And, of course, the most successful actor turned politician: Ronald Reagan.

CAPTION(S):

4 Photos

PHOTO (1) Bob Dylan

Shrine to salute him

(2) Randy Travis

Gets in holiday spirit

(3) Nadean Cool:

Speaks on `60 Minutes'

(4) Actor for office?

Actors Alec, left, and William Baldwin attend a campaign finance reform rally in Springfield, Mass.

Associated Press