LOS ANGELES — Mr. Pitt is going to Washington.

Nancy Pelosi's office says Brad Pitt will meet with the speaker of the House tomorrow to discuss his charity efforts in New Orleans.

The 45-year-old actor founded the Make It Right organization in 2007 to help build environmentally sustainable housing for low-income residents in New Orleans who lost their homes during Hurricane Katrina.

LIZ TAYLOR HEEDS OBAMA'S CALL

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — Elizabeth Taylor has expanded her philanthropy with a $100,000 donation to the Alliance for Christian Education.

The 77-year-old Oscar-winner says she was inspired by President Obama's call for Americans to "reach across the aisle" of political and ideological divide.

For decades, Taylor's philanthropy has focused on HIV/AIDS.

Taylor — who is Jewish — says she chose to underwrite the Christian-initiated education effort "because our new president challenged us to break down barriers that divide us."

COLLINS HAPPY TO REMEMBER ALAMO

SAN ANTONIO — Singer Phil Collins says his new "main thing" is the Alamo.

Collins, who said he has "hundreds" of cannonballs, documents and other artifacts from the Alamo, is in San Antonio this week for the anniversary of the March 1836 battle of the Alamo.

The 58-year-old collector says his most prized item is a receipt signed by Alamo commander William Barret Travis for 32 head of cattle to feed the Alamo defenders.

HARGITAY IN HOSPITAL FOR TESTS

NEW YORK — Emmy winner Mariska Hargitay was hospitalized yesterday after feeling discomfort from a partially collapsed lung.

The star of NBC's "Law & Order: Special Victim's Unit" is undergoing tests.

Hargitay, 45, has been ailing since at least mid-January, when producers announced that she had a partially collapsed lung. Her spokeswoman said the actress "expects to be feeling better soon" and that production of the show will not be affected.

NEVERMORE TO JULEPS, POE WROTE

RICHMOND, Va. — Edgar Allan Poe apologizes to his publishers for drinking too much and asks them to buy an article because he's "desperately pushed for money" in an 1842 letter acquired by the University of Virginia for an exhibition opening Saturday to mark the author's 200th birthday.

Writing from Philadelphia, Poe blames his friend William Ross Wallace, a poet and lawyer, for getting him to drink too many juleps and for misbehaving on a visit to New York.

The university bought the July 18, 1842, letter at a Sotheby's auction from a private collector.

"Will you be so kind enough to put the best possible interpretation upon my behaviour while in N-York?" Poe asks New York publishers J. and Henry G. Langley. "You must have conceived a queer idea of me — but the simple truth is that Wallace would insist upon the juleps, and I knew not what I was either doing or saying."

He expressing his hopes that he'll see the Langleys again "under better auspices." The enclosed article was rejected, but published elsewhere later that year.

Poe attended the University of Virginia, but had to drop out after less than a year in part because of financial difficulties, which plagued him the rest of his life. He died a mysterious death at age 40.