THAI PRINCESS ALIGHTS IN LANE COUNTY.

Byline: Bob Keefer The Register-Guard

"Any kind of royalty," Mark Twain once wrote, "is rightly an insult."

But Twain, like most Americans, was fascinated by kings, queens, princes and princesses.

Thursday's arrival in Eugene of a genuine Thai princess - Her Royal Highness Bajrakitiyabha Mahidol - highlights the deep ambivalence about aristocracy many Americans have. We are, as was Twain himself, caught between our lofty democratic ideals and tabloid fascination when we hear the word "princess."

The ambivalence starts at the top in Eugene, a town whose main experience with royalty is the coronation of the Slug Queen each year.

"I have a strong egalitarian and democratic streak and another that is about honoring cultural difference and tradition," Mayor Kitty Piercy admitted when asked about the princess' visit. "I will strive to be attuned to both."

Piercy said she was "honored and delighted to have the princess here." But, like many people in town, she found the formal protocol associated with a royal visit just a little daunting.

There are, for example, the wardrobe tips that have been e-mailed to countless local officials who might encounter the princess during her four-day stay.

Appropriate dress for women includes "a skirt equal to or longer than knee's length with the appropriate shirt with sleeves that cover the elbows," according to a memo from the U.S.-Thai Distance Learning Organization, a Eugene group sponsoring the royal visit. "The shoes should enclose all toes and the heels."

And, in case you are out of practice, the memo includes directions on how to curtsy.

However we manage to dress ourselves and bow, Eugene is literally bringing out the red carpet - even if it had to be rented - for today's ceremony at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, where Princess Bajrakitiyabha is to dedicate an exhibit about her grandfather, the king of Thailand. Organizers also have come up with 30 gallons of rose petals to be strewn in the princess' path.

Is this all a bit much?

Actually, all the protocol may mean much more to bureaucrats who write it than the princess herself, who is said to be quite a regular gal in real life who performs few of these official state visits.

Susan Cox, vice president of public policy and external affairs at Holt International Children's Services in Eugene, tells a story about Bertha Holt, the adoption agency's charismatic founder, visiting the queen mother in Thailand years ago.

Aides from both countries were aghast when Holt, a down-to-earth woman from Creswell, reached out and touched the queen mother while the two women were discussing their children. But the queen mother never blinked.

"They were just two mothers discussing their kids," Cox says. "It was fine."

Princes and princesses certainly represent a powerful childhood fantasy.

"What little girls all dream about is being fairy princesses," local comic Leigh Anne Jasheway says. "It's one of the most popular costumes that shows up at my door at Halloween. Of course, I live in Santa Clara."

Eugene Slug Queen Frank Slug-Snotra offered these suggestions to spice up the princess's visit, which largely consists of a series of meetings with local officials and a few dedication ceremonies.

"She should go to Saturday Market," said the queen, who in real life is Eugene singer and actress Shandi Sinnamon. "She should go to Belknap Hot Springs and get in the hot water. And she should go to the Ems game! It's a lovely, lovely baseball field. They have great hotdogs. And cute boys. They're catching and throwing and hitting and running and sitting and spitting. She should try and fit the Ems in."

But try as she might, the princess can never really be anything but the princess, as her arrival at Eugene Airport showed on Thursday.

As she and her entourage crossed through the public area of the terminal, security guards shoved people out of the way.

"I really think that was offensive," said Jim Hull, a Fairbanks man waiting in the terminal. He was pushed into his gray-haired mother when he didn't move quickly enough out of the princess' way, he said.

If the princess noticed, she didn't say anything.